ALPiNE BUTTERFLY BEND
by Sequizurx
Summary: [Sora × Kairi] Kairi had secrets she wanted to hide from everyone, and Sora was throwing a spanner in the works. With her witty schemes, she could smush him like mushy fruit and win her diary and her dignity back. [2nd place Inspire Illuminate's contest]
1. the wheel

**C**hapter **O**ne  
the **W**heel

"Hi, Kairi!"

Kairi turned delicately to the side. "Hey," she smiled, but kept walking.

She didn't often take much notice of the greetings in the corridors; they were too small and unimportant to need much affection. A quick salutation in reply, and the conversation was complete. No need for small talk and gingerly giving dainty hugs, just a nod and a wave and Kairi could escape unscathed.

Of course, sometimes someone would chase her down like a police dog, drooling desperately and asking if she wanted to be walked home or if she needed a lift, boxing her in a corner so that if she uttered anything besides 'yes, please', or 'gee, thanks!' she would cause offence and lose a friendly acquaintance.

A little _too_ friendly for Kairi's liking, some of them were.

"Hey, d'you wanna come back to mine and work on that assignment together?" her companion suggested.

The Wheel Of Witty Answers inside her brain whizzed around, hundreds of golden replies glittering and shooting in front of her eyes.

If she answered 'I already finished it', he would still invite her round, probably so that he could read her work and then copy parts of it. He may as well have asked her to spoon-feed him some A-minus yoghurt, as without her he would obviously have been lumbered with a F so huge it may as well have been in neon lights.

If she answered 'I'm already helping someone else', he would ask whom she was helping, and then he would look suspicious when she lamely mumbled the name of a random girl in her class. Then, of course, he would invite that girl along too, and probably hit on her and start a make-out session with her on the sofa while Kairi did all three of their assignments.

If she answered 'I can't. I'm busy', he would ask what she was doing, and she really couldn't be bothered to come up with a whole different list of excuses for that question too.

"No," she told him simply.

There, problem solved. Sure, he would think she was mean and rude and stuck-up and probably never talk to her again, but hey, what did that matter? At least it got him off her back.

"No?" he repeated, stopping in his tracks. "Why not?" he asked, jogging to catch up with her again.

Damn. She hadn't seen that one coming.

The Wheel Of Witty Answers got spinning again, whizzing round and round at the speed of light, the sparkle from the strobe lights burning her pretty violet eyes.

"I'm ill," she lied, still not looking up, still walking at a brisk pace.

He clearly didn't believe her, because he stopped on the spot again, his eyebrows raised and his hands on his hips.

She hurried onwards, still not looking up, and travelling at a faster speed now that he was not tagging along trying to slow her down and waste her time. He made no apparent move to dash after her and pester her some more, so she assumed he was still standing there looking like an idiot. Hey, if he wanted people to think he was pretending to model swimwear, that was his choice.

"Kairi!" he called from behind her. When he drew close enough he placed a warm hand on her shoulder. She sighed irritably and dragged herself into a one-eighty degree turn to face him. She looked up. Then up some more. And some more.

_How tall _is_ this guy?_ she thought in surprise, her neck aching from having to bend backwards so much. She was used to short, stout geeks with goofy teeth, round milk bottle glasses and fluffy orange hair stalking her, not athletic boys who were clearly into sports and other physical events.

"What?" she snapped bitterly, then clamped her mouth shut and gasped. So really, clamping her mouth shut was pointless, as it dropped open a few nanoseconds later anyway.

"What's wrong?" the boy asked, genuine concern in his tone. "My mom's a doctor, so if you're really ill she'll be able to get you some medicine or something."

Kairi stared.

"Oh," the boy nodded. "Is it a 'girl problem'? I won't ask any more, then. But I really could use some help with that assignment, if you're not busy," he flashed her a grin. "What d'you say?"

"Okay," Kairi squeaked.

Because who could say no to Sora? He was the cutest boy in school, the hottest boy in school, the kindest, happiest, cheeriest and sportiest boy in school and he was overall defiantly and definitively the_ coolest_ boy in school. And he possessed more fangirls than anyone else, even Wakka, although they weren't really 'fangirls', they were more like 'girls who wanted to trip him up in the hallway and shut him in his own locker'.

But that wasn't why Kairi was surprised that Sora had spoken to her. She wasn't flattered and giggly like any other girl would be, although she _was _confused. Confused and agitated that he had felt it necessary to delve his hand into the past and wrench out the last that remained of her sanity and will to live, thus upsetting the balance of peace.

She felt her stomach begin to twist into various types of knots; overhand, figure-of-eight, fisherman's knot, running knot, ring knot, alpine butterfly bend. And last but by no means least, a noose. In a cruel twist of irony, the redhead was going to be hung to death by her own intestines. A strange and probably very tricky method of committing suicide, it was true, but Kairi was contemplating giving it a shot. Yep, if the tarmac playground didn't oblige her desperate pleas and gulp her up like a wholesome mouthful of fish food pretty soon, she would have to resort to desperate measures and retract her head inside her own body and ram it into her stomach, then leave her assorted limbs and body organs to do as they pleased to it.

Sora grinned and ruffled his spiky chocolate-brown hair.

"Great," he winked. "So, I'll walk you home and you can come over later, yeah?"

Kairi blinked hurriedly, snapping back to the case laid in front of her, like a carefree lawyer would do after a merry little daydream about shredders and making out with a work colleague on top of a photocopier.

"What? No!" she exclaimed. "I… uh, have to… go now…" she blurted, then turned and scarpered away.

Sora frowned, perplexed. "What?" he yelled. "Kairi! Wait!"

Then he picked up his feet and surged forward, weaving around the masses of people also on their way home from school.

Although he knew, in his gut, that it wouldn't make any difference even if he were to catch her up. It was too late by now to change anything. But he didn't want them to stay the same.

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_I don't know why he started talking to me. And I don't care, either. I don't want to talk to him. He's a traitor. He might be the most popular boy in school, but that doesn't give him the right to start ordering me around! I hate him, I really do. I reeeally hate him. I don't get what his problem is._

_Why did he have to go and ruin things? We were getting on just fine being apart from each other, and then he had to go and change everything. I didn't want things to change. I liked them the way they were! Now he's upset the harmonic balance, and things will be all wrong for ages now._

_What does he want, anyway? He's smart, so why would he need help with that assignment? He must be lying, it's so obvious!_

_I reckon it's a dare. Or a bet. A bet to see if he can get any girl at all. I don't date, so maybe they thought I would play hard-to-get, and ignore him. Well, that's exactly what I have been doing. I bet he would be surprised if I took an interest. I bet that would shock him, catch him off guard. I'll show him. I'll show him, that TRAITOR._

_Love Kairi x_

* * *

**A/N: **Yay! This is for Inspire-Illuminate's contest. I know I haven't used the sentence yet, but it will come... soon. 


	2. role play

**C**hapter **T**wo  
role **P**lay

Kairi got up and rubbed her eyes. A regular morning routine for most people, ninety-nine percent guaranteed to get all the sleep out of the corners of your eyelids and clear your vision, ready for a new day full of glorious horrors and amazingly disgusting sights to study and take notes on.

She leapt from her bedcovers and tiptoed into the bathroom silently, careful not to wake anyone else. She stepped into the shower, got the water running, and then plunged her hands into the stream and splashed her face. Once she was showered and wrapped in her dressing gown, she paced back and forth in her tiny bedroom trying to decide what to wear.

She couldn't go for her usual flowery pink, white and lilac attire; it was too cute and childish. Today, she wanted to look cool and attractive. Today, she wanted to make Sora swoon and instantly fall for her, make him take a step back in surprise and think 'no way, I can't go through with this bet. I can't mess with _Kairi_!'

She shuffled through all her clothes on their flimsy coathangers like a pack of cards, sorting tops and skirts and pants into sections and splitting them into categories, chucking out anything potentially dorky.

By the time she was done, she had about two skirts, a tank top, a pair of skinny jeans and one white and pink dress. The dress was a little too cute and girly to look becoming, but it scarcely covered a single scrap of her flesh, and so that was an obvious choice.

Next, she crept into Naminé's room and searched for her hair straighteners among the mess of hairbrushes and hair serums and hair creams and other miscellaneous beauty products with hair- as a prefix. Kairi didn't understand her older sister's obsession with her hair; sure, it was long and pretty and blonde, but did it really deserve so much loving affection?

She didn't look pretty and neat now, that was for sure. Her quilt had been kicked onto the floor in the night and her usually neat and tidy hair was messy and scruffy, tangled all over the pillow.

Naminé was a high school dropout, although nobody had the faintest idea why. The blonde had been an overachiever, destined for a good university and excellent exam results, so all her teachers had been devastated and shell-shocked when she had announced that she was leaving for no apparent reason.

Kairi smiled at her sleeping sister. A lot of things had gone wrong for Naminé, but Kairi was still proud of her. Even though, she was one of the reasons the redhead couldn't have friends round, and yet another secret to store in her diary, Kairi still admired her elder sibling.

She scooped up the hair straighteners from Naminé's desk and coiled the long black wire around her arm. She almost made it out of the room unnoticed, until the plug on the end of the wire bashed into the doorframe with a rather obvious _thwack_. And just like that, she was caught out.

"Step away from the hair straighteners," Naminé muttered, not moving from her bed, not even opening her eyes.

Kairi stood as still as a statue.

"Kairi, I'm not stupid. I know you're standing there as still as a statue."

Kairi blinked.

"I know you're blinking."

Kairi frowned.

"I know you're frowning."

Kairi edged slowly out of her sister's room.

"I know you're edging slowly out of my room."

Kairi rolled her eyes. "Would you rather I _stayed_ in your room?" she questioned. She did have a good point, but Naminé snatched it off her and stabbed her with it.

"Yes."

_Damn_.

"Okay, well I'll just sit here and make a nuisance of myself by writing 'Kairi woz ere' on your wall with…" she scanned the desk for an interesting-looking aerosol can to claim. "'Diz Hairsprai Iz Da Shizz," she finished, then paused and checked the label again in disbelief. "Hell, were the manufacturers high when they named this?"

"Leave my hairspray alone," Naminé grumbled, rolling over. "What do you want?"

Kairi plonked herself down at the end of her sister's bed.

"Well…" she mumbled, twiddling her thumbs anxiously. "You see… I was wondering… if you could help me… maybe…"

Naminé shot straight up in bed to stare at the redhead.

"It's a boy, isn't it?" she grinned widely. "You like someone and you want to look good."

Kairi blinked, perplexed.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Naminé giggled. "Okay, sure, I can help you!"

She leapt from her bed and pulled her sister to her feet, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

"First of all, I have to introduce you to someone," she announced. Kairi looked on in surprise.

"Okay, who?" she queried.

"_This_, Kairi, is what we human beings call… a _hairbrush_."

"Oh, funny," Kairi muttered sarcastically, and then yelped as Naminé began to attack her head with it.

After the painful hair-brushing-combing-spraying-straightening session, Kairi's scalp had gone numb and Naminé felt as though her hands were going to fall off. But it was worth it, because Kairi looked absolutely brilliant, albeit a little slutty.

Her white and pink dress cramped all of the two millimetres that it covered like a corset, and conveniently made her chest stick out, as all of the popular girls' clothes did. It also made her legs look longer, possibly because it was so short it left no inch of skin hidden from the public eye.

"You're going to have to take a _lot_ of care how you sit down," Naminé reminded her sister. "And make sure you flick your hair a lot, to draw attention to how hot you are."

Kairi smiled and felt tears well up in her eyes. "Oh, Nami," she giggled, wrapping the blonde into a hug. "Thank you. You don't know what this means to me."

Naminé looked confused. "It's only a makeover," she pointed out. "And you looked pretty to start with."

Kairi sniffed, and wiped her eyes. "Thanks, Nami," she said again.

Naminé shook her head and smiled. "Hey, don't cry, your mascara will run! You want to get noticed by this boy, whoever he is, but not for having eyes like a panda, right?"

The redhead blushed, setting off the glossy auburn glow of her hair.

She smirked confidently at her reflection in the tall mirror. Yes, he _would_ notice her. She would _make_ him notice her. She would _throw_ herself at him if needed be. But she _would _get his attention, damnit.

_I'll show him… _she grinned slyly. _He won't be messing with me again after this._

* * *

The entire class gasped as Kairi entered the room. She paused in the doorway, struck a pose and flicked an auburn lock out of her face. Her fellow students were absolutely astounded. This tart in a tight pink mini dress couldn't possiblybe _Kairi_, could she? 

"Kairi?" Selphie gaped. "What on earth are you _wearing_?"

"Clothes, hopefully," Kairi sighed, trying to hide the distaste in her voice. She didn't like the dress much either, although she did have to admit that her hair looked pretty good. "Do you like it?"

Selphie blinked and stared at her friend. Unlike Kairi, Selphie was not fortunate enough to have a Wheel Of Witty Answers on permanent spin cycle in her brain. She did, however, have a lot of fluff and dead fly or two.

"Sure…" the blonde blinked. "It looks… nice."

Kairi smiled and tossed her hair the way she had always seen popular people do. She had been rather popular herself beforehand, but not in a short-skirt-double-d-chest kind of way like Tifa and Lulu and suchlike persons. She had friends, and was no stranger to people wanting to escort her home and begging for homework help, as demonstrated in the previous chapter.

Although the situation with Sora was different, because he obviously wanted something. Something more than just 'homework help'. She just didn't know what. So she stuck to her guns and continued her original plan- throw Sora off guard by pretending to have the hots for him.

To get into character, she sat on her desk and crossed her legs with _extreme_ care, fluttering her kohl-rimmed eyelashes at anyone caught looking her way. And that included a lot of people, as she was like a tree in a field; no one was surprised to see her there, but she stood out a hell of a lot all the same. She didn't look all that dissimilar to a lot of other girls in school, but she was _very_, very, **very** different to the Kairi everybody knew; smart, funny, cheery, nice, kind. Sensible, caring and sturdy. She was always there, ready to make people feel better about themselves with showers of compliments and hugs.

And now, although she still seemed like she was more than happy to cheer people up, she looked like the kind of gal keen to do it in a… _different _way, if you know what I mean.

"Kairi?"

The redhead looked up, making sure to lift her eyes slowly and then flick her hair and giggle.

"Hey, Sora," she smiled seductively, leaning back on the desk, her arms supporting her weight from behind. "Did you get that assignment done?"

Sora looked confused, and lifted his hand to scratch an itchy spot somewhere among his muddy brown spikes.

"Erm, no, not yet," he murmured uncomfortably. "Actually, Kairi, I wanted to talk to you about last night."

Kairi grinned and leant forwards, resting her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees.

"Oh, sure," she beamed. "What's up?"

_What am I saying_? she hissed to herself. _I sound like such a slut!_

It was true; she _did_ sound a lot like a bunny-boiler, but if her scheme to overthrow Sora was going to work, it was a sacrifice that had to be made.

"Well, uh… that was what I was hoping to ask you," the brunet admitted. "You just… ran off like that. Did I, uh, say something to upset you, or… something?"

Kairi rolled her eyes and grinned. "Oh, Sora, of course not!" she giggled, sliding off the edge of the desk and stepping towards him. She cocked her head to one side, knowing that it would make her look cute, but in a good (slutty) way.

Then, in the ultimate display of I-R-bitch-come-to-steal-your-boyfriend-ness, she leant forwards so that they were almost touching, and looked up at him through her smoky eyelashes, breathing out deeply. She pretended to find a bit of fluff on the shoulder of his shirt, so produced a hand to brush it off, and once the imaginary dust was safely dead and gone, she ran her palm down his arm and squeezed his elbow.

Now that that description of just how far Kairi was willing to go to get one over on Sora is over, I'm sure you will be able to guess how devastated she would be if he won that round despite all her painstaking efforts.

"You _bitch_!" came a high-pitched shriek echoing around the room.

Kairi spun on her wobbly heels, suddenly feeling all the novelty of her role-play wear off. Not worn off like the colour of a shirt that has been in the wash too many times, but like a fake tattoo on your arm that has to be scrubbed off brutally by a scrubbing brush with spikes instead of bristles, and only just manages to leave your skin red raw and not skin-_less_.

"You _bitch, bitch, __**bitch**_!" Olette screamed, lunging at Kairi, talons outstretched. Kairi knew straight off that if those pointy and perfectly manicured little claws of Olette's managed to penetrate her delicate skin, it would hurt. A lot. And she would draw blood and probably get red stains all over the carpet, which Kairi would be sent a bill for the shampooing of. Not that she'd be able to pay it of course, as she would have to spend all her pocket money on a blood transfusion, because her own blood would be all over the said carpet.

Fortunately, to save on surgery expenses, she managed to block Olette from attacking and then calmly ask, "What have I done?"

She hated the way her voice sounded; innocent, sweetness and light, the way bitches in movies always sound when they got caught making an all-out play for somebody else's boyfriend.

Which is, basically, what Kairi had been doing. She just didn't know it. And she didn't mean it, as she was being someone else. So it didn't count.

But what if it wasn't just role-play? What if it was more than just a plan to get one over on Sora?

"You evil little _slut_!" Olette screeched, yanking at Kairi's newly straightened hair.

"Ow, ow, OWWW!" Kairi yelled, trying to extract the brunette's clamped hands off her head. She was back to being her normal self again. She had to be, if she wanted to show any of the pain and remorse she was defiantly feeling. Bitches in movies shrieked and shouted, sure, but they didn't feel pain unless they were playing the tearful victim to attract attention. And Kairi already had enough attention, and not the good sort.

Trying not to let herself get angry, the redhead didn't fight back and only used blocking self-defence moves to try and avoid more injuries.

"Getoffgetoffgetoffowwwwwgetoffmeeeee!" Kairi shrieked, wailing in pain as Olette's fearsome nails left cat-like scratches on her arms.

Kairi mentally reminded herself to open an account at the local blood bank, just in case she got herself into any more scrapes like these. Which, now that her knowledgeable, studious reputation was being scrubbed away much like the novelty of her role-playing and cheap fake tattoos, seemed very likely.

"We've only been broken up one _day_!" Olette cried. "One measly _day_ and you think it's okay to chuck your slutty little self at _my_ ex-boyfriend?"

Kairi stopped struggling and fell silent, her face dropping.

"You've never _had _an ex-boyfriend, or any boyfriends at all, so you really wouldn't know, would you?" Olette sniffled.

Then she gave up trying to injure the other girl and turned and walked away, leaving Kairi staring shell-shocked at her retreating figure. The redhead shifted her gaze to Sora, who was looking at her with concern.

"Ex… boyfriend…?" she mumbled quietly.

So that was it. It all made sense. He didn't really want to be friends with her at all, and there _was_ no stupid bet. He was simply on the rebound, obviously lonely and bored and pining for some female company to pass the time until he found his next victim to suck all the life out of.

She was a filler. Something to slot into an empty gap in his schedule, colour in a blank window in his diary.

And then she stopped caring about her slutty role-play, thick black eye make-up and super-short dress that barely covered her butt. She didn't want to be that person any more. She wanted to be the kind, happy, bubbly Kairi, not the bitchy bunny-boiler she had become all because of this stupid game.

Stupid Sora. He'd ruined everything.

It was all that traitor's fault.

* * *

_Dear Diary,_

_Oh, crap. I'm really screwed now. I don't know what to do. But I know that I hate Sora now more than ever. He's completely ruined everything, and he tricked me into acting like a slut and making an utter fool of myself. Now the whole class hates me, I've got caught up in what will probably become a huge brawling argument tomorrow, and I skipped school for the rest of the day so the head will most likely send a letter home and Dad will end up yelling at me sabotaging my future and all that crap._

_Ugh. I feel so _stupid_. Now I need a new plan to get Sora back. Get him back as in get revenge for making me look like a fool, not get him back as in oh-my-gawd-he's-mine-BETCH._

_Although that will probably go wrong too. And I'll look even dumber and lose even more friends. I bet Selphie hates me now too, because she and Olette are pretty chummy. I swear, I honestly didn't know that Olette and the traitor were a couple. Well, they're not any more. I bet they will be tomorrow. They'll be back together and everything will be back to normal. I'll wear my usual clothes, act like myself again and work extra hard to catch up on all the work I missed yesterday._

_Everything will be normal, normal, normal again._

_Sorry, got to go, doorbell. Probably some of Olette's lackeys come to throw fruit at me. I'll take my umbrella to use as a block shield._

* * *

**A/N: **Yay! Hopes you liked it! I know Olette is a little OOC and I'm really sorry about that... /meep/. And who is at the door? o.O SUSPICIOUS! And.. rather OBVIOUS! Also, I know I haven't used the sentence yet, Inspire-Illuminate, but it's coming, it's coming... eventually... I bet I'll forget about the sentence and this fic will be nothing to do with the contest. That would be funny. Actually no it wouldn't, it would be slightly stupid, and it would make me cry. /sniffle/ 


	3. door bell

**C**hapter **T**hree  
door **B**ell

Kairi wasn't used to having sharp pointy objects thrown at her, so she didn't know what to expect as she gingerly crept towards the front door. Would they charge past her and run amok in her house? Or were they just cherry-knocking to annoy her, and let her know that they were there? And most importantly, if they _were_ going to chuck things at her, which seemed perfectly likely, would it hurt at all?

She doubted it, because after Olette's pointy nails, everything else was soft and fluffy like a dust bunny or evil plot bunny. Or just regular rabbit-type bunny.

"Who is it?" she called to the solid wood. Peering through the letterbox was too risky; they could jam sharp things through there as well.

"Selphie!" came the high-pitched voice of the cheery girl everybody loves. To hate.

Selphie didn't seem like the sort of person to throw rocks and/or fruit at innocent victims, so Kairi took a deep breath and prised the door open.

"Hi!" Selphie beamed. "How are ya? You look sad."

Kairi shrugged glumly and looked at her feet.

"Have you been crying?" Selphie asked, concerned.

Kairi shrugged again.

"A little. I guess," she admitted, not looking her friend in the eye, in case the said eyes promptly decided to fill with tears again and give her away. "But I'm fine."

She tacked the last comment onto the end of her sentence as an afterthought, worried that Selphie might start squealing and enveloping her in hugs and meaningless praises.

"You sure?" the brunette pressed. "You look really down."

Kairi rolled her eyes. "Well, I just made a complete fool of myself in front of the whole class. I'm not exactly jumping for joy," she pointed out.

Maybe not for joy, but it would have been perfectly acceptable for her to start jumping, perhaps in an attempt to hit whoever was 'up there' and curse them for giving her such a crappy life.

"True, true," Selphie sighed in that wistful way she did when she was thinking about a sad event, or something romantic like the sharing-paupu-destiny-entertwined thing.

Kairi stopped wallowing in self-pity for long enough to realise what was going on. Somebody had _come to her house_. That was _not_ supposed to happen.

"Oh, you know what, Selph?" she exclaimed. "I think I can hear the phone ringing! I'd better go now, bye!"

Selphie wrinkled her brow. "I don't hear anything," she pointed out, perplexed.

"I… have sensitive ears," Kairi lied, starting to close the door.

Selphie blinked. "Wait, Kai!" she exclaimed, pushing the door open further. "I forgot to invite you to my sleepover. Yuffie and Tifa are coming too. It's tonight, 'cause it's my birthday next week and all, and today's the only day that suits all three of us. What about you?"

Kairi tried to nod intently, but failed and ended up looking plain creepy.

"Yeah, yeah, sounds great, Selph, but I don't think I'll be able to make it," she replied. "Sorry!"

Selphie frowned. "Why not?" she queried. "You haven't even checked with your dad yet."

Kairi blinked rapidly and gestured flamboyantly with her limbs. "Yeah… yeah, I know but he'd say, like… no, and… stuff… well… bye!"

Selphie put her foot in the doorframe to stop the wood being slammed in her face.

"No way, Kai! You _gotta _ask him!" Selphie cried. "What makes you so sure he'd say no?"

Kairi mentally banged her head on the door. Why couldn't she just have said she didn't feel like it? Now she'd accidentally dragged her father into the matter, and that was the last thing she needed. She reached into her brain and got the fantastical Wheel Of Witty Answers spinning again.

Neon lights and flashing excuses flew past her eyes, coming to a standstill on an option that seemed perfectly suitable.

_Because he's an evil child abuser. He hits me if I don't do exactly as he says_.

Yes, that was _perfectly_ suitable- likely to get Kairi's dad arrested and Kairi put in the care of a distant crazy aunt with lots of cats, but sure, it would get Selphie off her back.

_Because he doesn't like me going out after dark. He thinks it's too dangerous, and he doesn't really know your parents very well._

That could work, only then Selphie would march her parents round to the redhead's house and force the adults to shake hands and discuss things over coffee and cheap custard creams until a decent conclusion was made, and Kairi was permitted to attend the sleepover. And that would not be good. Nor would it be good for Kairi to let Selphie assume that her father's consent was essential, and his word beat all others to a mushy, messy, gooey pulp. That would shrink her social reputation even smaller than it already was.

_We're going out for a family dinner._

Perfect.

"We're going out," Kairi answered defiantly. "For a family dinner."

Selphie cocked her head to one side in interest.

"Oh, cool, just you and your dad?" she asked.

Kairi gritted her teeth. This was not safe territory.

"And my sisters," she murmured. "So, y'know, I really have to go now… sorry…"

"Aw," Selphie pouted. "Well, if you change your mind, just give me a ring, m'kay?"

Kairi nodded and tried to smile as realistically as possible. So not very realistically at all.

Once the door was safely shut, locked and bolted, the redhead leant back against it and let out a deep sigh of relief that she got away with her evil lies.

That was, until the doorbell rang again.

She reluctantly turned around and yanked the bolts out of their slots so she could get the door open.

"Who is it?" she sighed lifelessly as she did so, not really caring as she would have greeted them anyway.

"Sora," came a male voice.

Kairi froze.

"Sora?" she repeated, her hands lingering over the last bolt, undecided as to whether to unlock it or not.

"Yeah," the boy answered. "Are you gonna let me in?"

Kairi took a deep breath and prised the door open in one swift, fluent movement.

"Hi," she mumbled, watching Sora grin at her sheepishly.

"How's things?" he asked casually, as if he had forgotten the events of that morning.

"Fine," she answered automatically. "Did you want something?"

Sora shrugged. "Just came to see how you were," he replied. "Oh, and to ask if you still needed any help with that assignment."

Kairi scowled. "_I _wasn't the one who asked for help," she pointed out bitterly. "That was _you_. _I_ can do my own work just fine, thanks."

Sora rolled his eyes. "Okay, well, yeah. That's true," he admitted. "But I'm really stuck for words, so… do you think you can find it in your heart to help me?"

Kairi glared at him. "I'm busy," she answered flatly.

"Busy?"

"Yes. _Busy_."

Sora raised his eyebrows. "Doing what?" he smirked, obviously amused.

Kairi flapped her arms about randomly as she tried to think of a good excuse. The Wheel Of Witty Answers seemed to be jammed and refused to help her out.

"I don't know… just _stuff_, okay?" she shrugged, feeling harassed. "Y'know, studying and homework and…crap..."

_Crap_.

"Homework?" Sora grinned. "Can I take a look? Mine's a load of rubbish so far. I have it right here, in fact, if you need proof of my stupidity."

He fumbled around in a pocket of his jacket, pulled out a few tatty scraps of notebook paper and thrust them at the girl.

Kairi rolled her eyes. "I don't need _proof _to figure that one out," she muttered, but took the papers anyway.

She began skimming through them, not really registering any of the words into her brain and only vaguely scanning the facts he had scrawled in his spiky handwriting.

"Yeah, it's great," she mumbled. "But I have to go now…"

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" Sora prompted, mock-pouting.

_What, so that you can make a fool out of me twice in one day? _she thought sourly. She may have been a little careless and hasty in her recent actions, but she wasn't plain stupid.

Kairi pretended to consider this option for a moment. "Uh, no," she replied, and then smiled sweetly. "Bye, Sora!"

He, like Selphie, could not be exterminated as easily as that. His oversized feet found themselves jammed in the doorframe, much to Kairi's annoyance.

"Look, can you just go, please?" she grimaced, crossing her arms over her chest. She had since changed out of the agonisingly tight dress and was wearing a comfy black and white top and layered flowery lilac skirt. Dressed in her usual attire, she felt a good deal more confident and _lot_ less like a bunny-boiler than she had done that morning. Plus, skipping the rest of the day off school to wander around town until an believable hour to return home is always more relaxing than being shoved into corners and called a slut.

"What, and get an F for this assignment?" Sora mock gasped, then grinned. "Oh, come on, Kairi, your dad won't mind us doing homework together, will he?"

"Yes, actually," Kairi informed him.

Sora raised his eyebrows. "And… why's that?"

She thought for a moment. "We're redecorating," she finally announced. "Paint, mess, ladders and crap everywhere."

He shrugged. "Okay, we can always go to my house," he suggested.

Kairi blinked rapidly. "Well, that might not work either," she added.

"Why not?"

"Because… he doesn't like me going to strange boys' houses," she explained, lying through her teeth.

Well, it might not have been a lie, but having never been eager to go to any strange boys' houses, she hadn't a clue what her father's reaction would be if she asked him.

"Oh, that's okay!" Sora smiled broadly. "'Cause he already knows me, right?"

Kairi's heart sank. She hadn't thought of that. Really, without the magical Wheel in function she was destined to bury herself alive.

"…I mean, sure, I might've changed a bit since I was last round here, but I'm still pretty recognisable, right?" Sora continued.

"I guess," Kairi murmured. "But-"

"But, nothing," Sora interrupted, and stepped inside the house, peered from side to side and detected activity in the kitchen.

"Sora, don't-"

He strolled into the room and smiled cheerfully at its inhabitants.

"Hello," he beamed at Naminé.

Naminé looked wrathful. "Sora," she greeted icily, then went back to attempting to spoon-feed Yuna some rather _un_appetising mush.

"Hello, Yuna," he smiled, bending down lower to wave politely at the toddler.

"Gah," Yuna proclaimed, banging one of her chubby fists on the plastic surface on the front of her high chair.

"Sora!" Hercules exclaimed. "We haven't seen you around here in ages. How've you been?"

Sora looked pleased that Kairi's father not only recognised him, but also looked neither angry nor repulsed to see the boy as all three of his offspring had done. Well, Yuna didn't seemed all that interested in the brunet's appearance. From her reaction, it was as if Kairi invited whole hoards of strange teenagers round on a daily basis.

Which, of course, she did not.

"I'm great, thanks, sir," he beamed. "Do you think it would be alright if Kairi and I went back to my house to do homework?"

Hercules looked astonished, but quickly hid his surprise. "I don't see why not," he replied. "Just make sure you have her back before it gets dark, okay?"

Kairi scowled. "I can get myself home just fine, thanks," she muttered.

The two males exchanged smirks, so Kairi turned to her sister for support. Naminé rolled her eyes and nodded once in reply, signalling to the redhead that she should go and enjoy herself.

"Go and enjoy yourself, Kairi," Hercules insisted, proclaiming in a whole sentence what Naminé could portray in a mere movement of her pretty blonde head.

Sora smiled in thanks at her father, then grabbed Kairi's arm and tugged the girl lightly out of the room.

She snatched her hand away automatically, then felt a pang when she noticed the brunet's hurt expression.

"I'll go get my stuff," she told him, then jogged up the stairs and into her bedroom. She checked he was not following her up and then delved under her mattress and yanked out her diary.

_Dear Diary, _she began.

_Sora came round. He's asked me to go back to his house to 'do homework'. I mean, really, that is _so _unoriginal. I've just come up here to collect my books and stuff. I haven't started the assignment yet myself, so I probably won't be that much use at all. Maybe I'll be the one who ends up copying _him_, seeing how from the draft he showed me he's obviously put a lot of thought into it. I haven't even got a clue what I'm going to do mine on; maybe he can give me some suggestions. __I doubt it. He's so dense and predictable._

_Anyway, I'm going round to his now- he sucked up to my dad til he let me go. I would've been allowed anyway, but I had to lie and say that I wouldn't, because… well… I didn't _want _to. Well, I mean, I _did_ want to go, but I don't like going to other peoples' houses in case they assume this means they can invite themselves round to mine whenever they feel like it._

_Although, really, that's what he just did._

_Plus I don't want to go to Sora's house. I didn't mean it when I said in that last paragraph that I did. 'Cause I don't. He's a traitor. A TRAITOR._

_Oh crap, I just realised I left him downstairs alone with them! What if Dad or Naminé say something? Well, I know Naminé wouldn't say anything about Dad, because that's not the sort of thing you just drop into the conversation, but she might say something else, or Dad might say something else, and then Sora will ask me about it, and… oh crap, crap, crap!_

_I'd best go now. He might be a traitor, but nobody deserves to be left alone with my family for too long. Plus I don't want them to give anything away._

_Love Kairi x_

She slammed her diary closed, stuffed it into her bag, and then scoured her desk for random items that could pass as pencils and pens and sharpeners and other suchlike homework-ish merchandise.

"Kairi?"

"Coming!"

She shrugged the bag onto her shoulders then dashed down the stairs, tripped on the last step and fell straight into Sora's arms.

"Heh," she mumbled sheepishly, letting go of him and standing up by herself. "Sorry."

Sora looked secretly pleased. "That's okay," he assured her.

They both eyed the front door that just minutes ago Kairi had been worried about opening.

"Shall we go?" Kairi suggested.

Sora nodded, and courteously held the said door open for her.

She smiled sarcastically at him as she walked through it. Sora rolled his eyes. Sometimes, he didn't know why he bothered.

* * *

**A/N: **Yay! This chapter was fun to write, 'cause it all flowed really easily. Although I don't know if it reads like that... heh... Anyway, in the next chapter, something i_nteresting_ will happen. Because nothing interesting has really happened so far. And all will be revealed fairly soon about why Kairi doesn't want to have friends round, and what all these secrets are, and what Sora did that makes him a TRAITOR. 

Oh, and also, when I said in the last chapter that it was obvious who was at the door, I meant that it was obvious that it was Sora come to the door, not Selphie. Because originally Sora was supposed to come first, and then Selphie was going to ring Kairi up, but then I made Selphie come to the door instead. Because I felt like it. Hee.

And yet again, I apologise for the lack of the sentence. But it _is_ coming. Soon. Honest. /SMILEEE/


	4. hate hate hate you

**C**hapter **F**our  
hate hate hate **Y**ou

It is a commonly known fact that in every unfamiliar building one chooses to enter, there is always a slight possibility that there is an angry mob of scythe-wielding maniacs ready to leap out and get you. 

As of yet, the only method to ensure that there are no suchlike villains hiding in hat stands or coat racks, you must scope from side to side and back again, all the while having your eyes narrowed with a suspicious glare plastered on your now crooked and weird face.

This is just one of those things that everyone instantaneously knows; even if they have never seen any movies or read any how-to-look-like-a-crazy-fool manuals, they always perform this one simple task automatically. It is as if something is built into the brains of all human beings that makes them instantly suspicious of new surroundings they have not graced with their majestic presence before.

Kairi was no exception to this rule, plus she had extra reason to be untrusting of Sora. So, upon entering the tiny hovel the brunet called 'home', she shifted her gaze left and right around the doorway area to check that nothing was at wrongs, and then showed her acceptance of her surroundings with a swift nod.

"Very nice house you have," she announced to her companion, who merely raised his eyebrows.

"It's your friends' _parents_ you're supposed to say that to, not the friends themselves," he pointed out.

Kairi glared at him, but not suspiciously, like she had done whilst examining his hallway.

"I didn't," she muttered. "Because we're not friends. You're just so damn stupid you can't do your own homework."

And with that, the purpose of telling Sora they were not friends was defeated, as by making a joke he was forced to grin and say something witty in return. This method of talking is often known as 'friendly banter'. So, as you can see, they may not have been direct friends, but they were becoming more and more friend_ly_, which, in all fairness, is only an l and a y away from best buds for life. Or, in some cases, making out on the sofa when one's parents aren't home.

"Oh, right, sorry," Sora murmured, rolling his eyes. "I forgot we were supposed to keep hating each other for no reason for the rest of our lives."

Kairi stopped admiring (sympathising) the sickeningly flowery wallpaper and spun around to face him.

"It's _not_ for no reason," she snapped.

His face changed from jokey and smug to hurt and guilty as she spoke, and he couldn't return her eye contact while her pretty violets were piercing a hole in him.

"Sorry," he mumbled uncomfortably. "Shall we go up to my room?"

Kairi looked suspicious again, but soon got over it.

"Sure," she replied, careful not to sound too keen in case he mistook her eagerness, but not wanting to deter his choice of leading her up there.

She only really wanted to go into his bedroom to see how it had changed over the years. She vaguely remembered how it used to be filled with teddies, then model ships and toy swords. She even remembered (and was still faintly haunted by) his Harry Potter fanboy phase, which, although it had only lasted a few months, Kairi had never let him live down.

That is, until they broke friends and she refused to speak to him about even little things like what time it was or when their homework was due, let alone about whether or not he still thought Daniel Radcliffe was sexy whilst he was covered in sweat and pointing a stick at an bald guy yelling random words that sounded like 'ridiculous' and 'allo, hamora!'

And even though she had promised herself that she would never forgive him for what he did, she still longed for that awkward silence to be over.

So, as the stairs came to an end and they could no longer use their efforts at climbing the steep steps as an excuse to remain mute, Kairi opened her mouth to say something.

"I…" she began.

He looked at her, his expression astonished but grateful at the same time. He obviously hadn't liked the eerily low noise level either.

But Kairi didn't have anything interesting to say at all, so she bobbed her mouth open and closed a few times, before blushing and looking at the floor.

"You look like a fish when you do that," Sora grinned, and Kairi smiled nervously. Then he gestured vaguely in the general direction of a random door and proclaimed it his bedroom.

Kairi raised her eyebrows. "I've been here before," she pointed out cynically. "It's that one, I'm not stupid."

"I was just testing you," he smiled, winking. And before she could stop herself, Kairi giggled back, her face colouring cherry-red, and followed him into the room that was actually his.

She looked astonished as she entered. It was _completely_ different to the way it had been; all the toys were gone, along with some more childish books Sora had once treasured, and the alphabet and times table posters he had insisted that Aerith had forced him to stick up there were now filled with pictures of rock bands and dumb phrases like 'skate or die' and '3runnin 4 life.'

"No Harry Potter posters, then?" she smirked, nudging him with her elbow.

He rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her, only making her laugh even more.

"Shall we get started?" he suggested, then laughed at himself when he heard himself say that under the current circumstances; a girl and a boy alone in a bedroom together. Not that anything would _ever_ happen between Sora and Kairi, as everybody knew they hated each other.

_Hated_ each other.

* * *

"_I hate you, Sora!" Kairi yelled at the top of her lungs. "I hate, hate, **hate**__you!!"_

_Sora looked stricken._

"_But, Kai!" he cried. "I wasn't- I mean, I didn't-"_

"_Get out!" she screeched. "How can I ever trust you again? You… you…"_

_His horrified expression turned angry, his fists clenched by his sides as he leant closer to her for full dramatic effect._

"_I wasn't even _doing_ anything, Kairi!" he snapped matter-of-factly. "You're making it all up!"_

"Me_ making it up?" she spat. "_You're _the liar, Sora! I _saw _you with my own two eyes!"_

"_Oh, yeah?" he snarled, stepping forwards. "Well, if you don't back off right now, you might end up having two _black_ eyes!"_

_Kairi scowled. "Is that a _threat_?" she hissed._

"_Yes," he replied smugly, hands on his hips. "I do believe it is."_

_The redhead's face crumpled. "You're threatening me?" she whispered._

_Sora's face dropped too._

"_Of course not, Kai, I'm sorry," he sighed, reaching out to hug her, but she pulled away._

"_No!" she shrieked. "Leave me alone, Sora. After what you did I don't think I can ever, ever forgive you. Just go away, please."_

"_Kai, I didn't mean it!" Sora exclaimed. "You know I'd never fight you."_

"_It's not about the dumb threat," she replied sadly. "I know you didn't mean it. But I don't think I want to be around you anymore, now that you've done what you did."_

_Sora blinked rapidly. "Kai, I didn't even-"_

"_I DON'T CARE!" she shouted angrily. "Just go away! Go away _now_!"_

* * *

Sora sat down on the edge of his bed, leaving his desk chair free for Kairi. She took it up, then shimmied her bag off her shoulders and fumbled around inside it. 

"I have my notes and stuff here," she began. "But I haven't started the actual essay yet."

"Good, me neither," Sora added sheepishly. "We could do it together, 'cause… y'know, it'd be easier… and stuff…"

"Sure," Kairi beamed, much to the brunet's relief. He so hated it when she rejected him. "Any suggestions for a topic?"

"Well… we could…" he trailed off. "Never mind. It's a dumb idea."

Kairi was not gullible, so she knew that when people said 'never mind', 'it doesn't matter' or 'don't ask', they really mean 'pay attention to me, I'm interesting', 'it is very important' and 'ask me, ask me, ask me, and even if you don't I'm going to tell you anyway, FWAHAHAHAHA!'

So, just to annoy Sora and make him look like a crazy fool, she answered, "Oh, okay then."

She smiled sweetly at him, then continued, "Well, I've had a few ideas myself, none of them are very good, but anyway…"

She rattled off a couple of suggestions, which Sora tried to look vaguely interested in but ended up paying little attention to.

Their assignment was to write an essay on something that meant a lot to them. Kairi seemed keen to scribble down 500 words on her favourite band or ramble on about her drama classes, which she enjoyed a lot and had gotten quite good at, as demonstrated earlier that day with her popular-biatch-acting.

Sora, once he decided to talk again, didn't say anything about the supposedly brilliant idea he had mentioned earlier, but instead rambled on about meeting his penpal, Sib, who he had originally chatted to on the (insert huge gigglesnort here) Harry Potter fanclub website, but now discussed art and computing and other suchlike matters with.

"Yes, I suppose meeting another Daniel Radcliffe fanboy must have been quite a special moment," Kairi agreed. "After all, they are rare creatures nowadays."

Sora scowled and crossed his arms.

"_You _come up with something better, then," he prompted.

"I've already said drama and music," she pointed out, then flopped back against the chair.

"What other crap do we like?" Sora sighed out heavily.

Kairi's pulse fluttered as he said 'we'. Not that there _was_ a 'we' where Sora and Kairi were concerned.

They thought back to things that had amused them when they were younger.

They had liked toy trains and cars, building bricks and fluorescent pink play-dough, although this could be said of most young children. Sora in particular had liked dressing up his Yunalesca doll in varied assortments of different outfits that never really fit properly and only made her look like a tart.

Although Kairi couldn't really pass judgement on a doll for how short her skirt was after her antics that morning. She still felt really stupid over her ridiculous scheme.

"Sora…" she began slowly. "About this morning…"

"Yeah?" he murmured, preoccupied jotting down some notes on a piece of paper.

"You know I didn't mean to be so…" she trailed off.

Sora looked up. "So what?" he queried.

Kairi took a deep breath. "I was _trying_ to look like a slut," she explained, then realised she had done so very, very badly.

"I don't follow," Sora blinked, his expression sceptical.

She looked down at her hands in her lap. "Well… you see…" she murmured. "I wanted to… to make you… I don't know… kind of… I guess I… I was trying to…"

Sora smiled and nodded, then leant forwards until their faces were almost touching.

"I know," he said, his mouth moving slowly, his breathing in time with Kairi's. And then, before she noticed in time to stop him, he had jolted forwards and pressed his lips against hers.

She leapt backwards, taken by surprise.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" she exclaimed, an expression of shock plastered onto her face.

Sora blinked rapidly. "B-but I thought-" he stammered. "You just _said-_"

Kairi stared at him with disgust.

"I never said I wanted to-" she began. "Oh my GOD, Sora, you pervert!"

"What?" he gaped. "I only thought that you meant-"

"Yeah, well, I didn't," Kairi finished flatly.

"Well what _did_ you mean, then?" Sora prompted, exasperated.

Kairi gazed at him, taking things in.

He was tall, arrogant, cocky. He thought highly of himself, he was obsessed with his appearance. Did she really want to be around someone like that?

Then she thought back to years gone by, when they had played together in the sand pit and built wonky castles and collected big shells.

She tripped over a rock and cut herself on gravel, and Sora helped her up and made it all better.

Then she thought harder, and found a scenario imprinted into her memory, that was much more relevant and much more revisited.

She walked into her room and found him already in there.

Reading her diary.

And that's why she knew she had to break friends with him, because friends ask each other too many questions.

He would press her for a little elaboration on what he had read, and he might find out her sister's secret, or the fact about her father that she had tried to mask and deny for so long.

That is, if Sora didn't already know. What if he had read more than he admitted to?

"I _hate_ you, Sora!" Kairi shrieked, just as she had done years ago. "I hate, _hate_, _**hate **_you!"

She ran at the door, wrenched the handle around until it opened for her, and then sprinted away with all her might.

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry it took me a few days to update.. I had drama and crap, and then we went to a show in London so I didn't get home til like midnight and I couldn't be bothered to update this morning because I was forced to go back to drama again and then I got a good part so I was like happee but then I was bored because I can't sing so I was all "mmmfff aaaaahhhh glorified rock chhhh baaaaa nmmmmfff aaannnnnn deeeeee".

Anyway, please review-eth, because I needs reviews to fuel my brain.. and.. crap. AND I NO I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE SENTENCE IT'S IN THE NEXT CHAPTER. Or possibly the chapter after that. Or the chapter after that. Okay, let's just say it's coming soon, okay?

There's not many chapters left so I'm almost certain this will be finished by the first of August (which is the contest deadline). So that's good, no? And if it's not I'll type some random crap really fast, stick it up here and say "ohsorryit'slatemyinternetwasn'tworking."

That should do the trick. xP


	5. first kisses

**C**hapter **F**ive  
first **K**isses

Kairi was too busy to be sad. Selphie, Yuffie and Tifa had her performing endless (and rather pointless) tasks; straightening her hair, then curling it, then crimping it, only to drag it scruffily into a high ponytail to get it out of the way while they applied face masks. 

So in a matter of hours, Kairi had transformed from a sad, tearful girl crying her eyes out to a laughing, smiling girl who was blinded by two thin slices of cucumber and had a face covered in what looked like toothpaste.

"Are you sure these are all good for the skin?" she had asked nervously when Yuffie had produced a vast assortment of different face packs from her bag.

"Sure," she beamed, rifling through the collection until she found the mixture she had been looking for. "Avocado, mango and pumpkin seed," she proclaimed, reading the label. "Here, why don't you try this one?"

Kairi cringed. "No, thanks," she mumbled. "I'll just leave my face the way it is."

Yuffie, Tifa and Selphie burst out laughing.

"Oh, Kai!" Yuffie giggled.

"Come on, hun," Tifa chortled in an annoying, patronising manner.

"You gotta have a face pack, don't you know _anything_ about stereotypical American sleepovers?" Selphie tutted.

Kairi blinked for a moment, then shook her head. She had never stayed over at anyone's house before, except for her grandmother's and once her aunt's. Neither of these occasions had been under happy, pleasurable circumstances. In fact, they had not been very happy or pleasurable at all. Kairi remembered sitting on her elderly relatives' sofas, fingers curled tightly in her lap.

* * *

"_You can sleep on the camp bed, Kairi," her grandmother proclaimed, waving her bony fingers vaguely at the closet. "It's in there. I'm sure you can set it up yourself."_

_Kairi's looked down at her hands twiddling on her knees. "I'm not very good at technical stuff," she mumbled nervously, to which her grandmother tutted in irritation._

"_Ten years old, and you can't even set up a camp bed," the old woman sighed._

"_I'm…" Kairi protested, then stopped. She felt it best if she let her grandmother believe she was younger. That way she might get treated even a tiny bit nicer._

"_When your mother was your age, I had her doing chores and running errands all day long, to keep her fit," the woman declared. "You'll have to do your own work some day, and she got in the practice while she was young. You should do the same! It would do you well to follow in your mother's footsteps."_

_Kairi grimaced. "What, run off to Hollow Bastion with a strange man I've only just met and leave all my family behind?" she asked bitterly._

_The old woman pursed her lips._

"_Don't badmouth your mother, Kairi," she snapped. "I don't see why you're taking your father's side in this, as it's his fault."_

"_Why? He drove her away, did he? She didn't _choose_ to leave?" Kairi spat. "Come on, then! What feeble excuse are you going to make for her now?"_

"_Kairi!" Hercules objected upon entering the room. "Don't talk to your grandmother like that."_

_Kairi felt wronged. "But she was saying stuff about _you!_" she protested defiantly. "Would you rather she continued insulting you?"_

_Hercules bowed his head in shame, then lifted his gaze slightly and nodded at his mother. She promptly left the room, first giving Kairi a haughty and impertinent glare._

_The redhead looked up at her father with an expression of confusion and anxiety on her face._

"_Dad?" she breathed._

_Hercules sighed. "Kairi, there's something I need to tell you," he began, and Kairi blinked._

"_What?" she asked. "Is it about Mum?"_

_He shook his head. "No, no, it's not about her," he replied sadly. "Don't blame her for leaving, it's not her fault. It's mine."_

"_Yours?" the redhead repeated. "Why? What have you done?"_

_Hercules didn't answer for a moment, and continued looking at the floor._

"

* * *

"Let's play truth or dare!" Selphie proclaimed, then pouted. "On second thoughts, just truth. There's only four of us so dares would be crappp." 

Kairi bit her lip.

"So, Kairi," Selphie began instantly. "How many boys have you kissed?"

The redhead blushed. Trust Selphie to pick the one question that defeated the whole purpose of her finally deciding to attend Selphie's sleepover in the first place- to forget about that afternoon's events. And that morning's events. Basically, she wanted to forget the whole day. That would just about sum it up, into a nice neat little package.

"Um…" she mumbled. "I… don't know."

"C'mon! You can tell us!" Tifa grinned.

"Yeah, it's not like we'll tell anyone else," Yuffie added.

Kairi bit her lip again. It was going to have a huge chunk missing from it if she carried on like this.

"Okay, fine," Selphie rolled her eyes when she spotted the redhead's anxious face. "Just tell us… um… who was your _first_ kiss?"

Kairi blushed furiously. That was an even _worse_ question.

"I… um… can't remember," she lied, lowering her head so her auburn hair veiled her cherry-red face.

"Oh, come on!" Yuffie prompted, prodding the girl in the back. "You _must_ remember! You can't _forget_ your first kiss!"

She really rather would have liked to.

"Oh my gosh!" Tifa exclaimed. "You have _had_ a first kiss, right?"

Kairi frowned. "_Yes_," she scowled, then realised she was defeating the whole purpose of her not telling them in the first place.

"Okay, well, tell us about it then, silly!" Yuffie sighed, getting her magic poking finger out again and using it as a weapon against the girl with sealed lips.

"Yeah, go on, Kai," Tifa agreed.

"Give us all the juicy details!" Selphie added, in that annoyingly cliché voice used in all chick flick movies.

Kairi felt her colour rising by the nanosecond.

"I don't know, I don't know," she gabbled. "I… um…"

Tifa, Selphie and Yuffie all had expressions of interest and eagerness to listen on their picture-perfect faces by this point, and Kairi knew that if she backed out now they would think her a sad, pathetic little baby.

She would have to make something up, because she didn't want to tell them the truth.

* * *

"But…" Kairi pointed out. "Isn't that… yucky?" 

_Sora pondered for a moment. "I don't _think_ so…" he replied uncertainly. "Nobody on TV seems to think so."_

"_I guess not…" she sighed. "Heh, okay then."_

_Sora blushed and smiled nervously._

"_Um… eh…" he mumbled with anxiety. "Do you, uh, know how?"_

"_Not really," Kairi answered. She practiced puckering her lips up, and when Sora spotted her he tried too._

"_So… um…" he muttered, leaning forwards a little so their noses bumped together uncomfortably._

_They both giggled and stepped back._

"_Maybe if… I go _this _way, and… you go _that _way?" she suggested, cocking her pretty little head to one side to show him what she meant._

"_Is that… left or right?" Sora asked worriedly._

"_I don't suppose it matters," Kairi answered thoughtfully. "But I think it's left."_

"_Left…" Sora repeated. "My left, or your left?"_

_She rolled her eyes. "Is it important?"_

"_No…" he replied, and then leant forwards once again, his lips puckered up to make a small heart shape._

_Kairi burst out laughing._

"_What?" Sora scowled defensively._

"_You look funny!" Kairi squealed, doubling up with giggles._

"_So do you!" he pointed out, and then they both started giggling, rocking back and forth._

_Once their squeaky laughter had died down, they turned to face each other._

"_Do you want to try again?" Sora questioned, trying to sound manly and tough, but failing. Kairi found that rather amusing too, but managed to control herself._

"_Okay," she beamed, and licked her lips anxiously._

"_Yeuk, that's gross!" Sora exclaimed._

_Kairi rolled her eyes and wiped her mouth on her sleeve._

"_Ready?" she enquired, and the brunet nodded, leaning in towards her._

_For a second, they could hear themselves breathing in unison, only a few centimetres of air between them. Their eyes locked together, an expression of anxiety, anticipation and excitement glittering in both of their wide-open eyes._

_And just for a moment, although it felt like longer, their cute little pouts joined together and merged into one as their lips pressed together, sealing the bond of their friendship forever._

_Although they leapt apart soon after, almost making themselves sick with laughter, they knew their friendship really _would

* * *

Or so they thought. 

'Forever'.

Forever didn't take long

Kairi didn't feel like sharing this sentimental moment with the three gossip addicts sat cross-legged beside her on Selphie's sugar-pink bedroom floor.

"I don't know," she answered again. "I really can't remember."

Yuffie raised her eyebrows. "A one night stand, was it?" she smirked.

Kairi looked horrified. "I'm not like that!" she insisted.

"Oh, come on, Kairi!" Tifa exclaimed. "What about today at school? You _threw_ yourself at Sora."

"Yeah, like, what happened between you two, anyway?" Yuffie added. "You used to be like, best friends."

"I don't know," Kairi answered bitterly, her tone bland and empty. "We just stopped being friends. It's Selphie's turn now, I think."

"Nuh-uh!" Selphie protested. "You never answered a question."

"Yeah," Yuffie agreed. "We'll give you another one."

Tifa sighed heavily. "Alright… your… ooh, the _last_ person you kissed?" she suggested.

Kairi grimaced and remained silent. She didn't want to answer that either. Could they ask any _more_ inconvenient questions?

"Okay, fine," Selphie groaned, struggling to remain a pleasant smile while Kairi was being so non-talkative and annoying. "If you don't want to answer that… why were you crying when you phoned me up this afternoon to ask if you could still come?"

Kairi blinked. _Subtle, Selphie. Real subtle._

"I… hurt my arm," she replied finally. "Hit it on… a door. Reaching for the phone."

Selphie narrowed her eyes. "And why did that family dinner get cancelled?"

Kairi's eyes widened. She had forgotten about that little white lie.

"Um… we got doublebooked. And the other people offered more money, so they got it," she murmured.

"Couldn't you have gone somewhere else?"

"Um… no, Dad really likes that restaurant. We… used to go there with Mum," she lied. That should shut them up.

"Oh," Selphie mumbled uncomfortably. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Kairi smiled. "Now, your turn! If you had to, which of the boys in school would you go out with?"

Yuffie rolled her eyes.

"That is _such_ an obvious question," she sighed.

"Yeah, at least come up with something original, Kai," Tifa groaned.

Kairi thought for a moment.

"Err… okay," she muttered. "If you had to, which of the… _girls_ in school would you go out with?"

Selphie looked taken-aback.

"Girls?" she repeated gingerly. "Uh… I'm not gay, Kai-Kai."

"Yeah, but I mean hypothetically," Kairi explained.

Selphie exchanged glances with the other two girls, who looked just as disgusted as their leader.

"Uh, yeah, but _hypothetically_ I'm still not gay," Selphie pointed out.

"It was only a question…" Kairi murmured.

"So…" Yuffie piped up nervously. "Does this mean… _you're_ gay?"

Kairi creased her forehead. "No… why?" she asked.

"Oh, good!" Tifa breathed a sigh of relief.

"Why? What's wrong with people being gay?" Kairi enquired.

The three girls exchanged glances again.

"Oh, nothing… nothing…" Selphie murmured, secretly sniggering.

Kairi felt herself blushing. It was true, _she_ wasn't gay, but that didn't give them the right to be so homophobic.

"What have you got against gay people?" she pressed angrily. "Or are you just prejudiced?

"Okay, no idea _what_ that word means…" Tifa murmured.

"Look, no, it's okay, we're sorry," Selphie answered hastily. "We didn't mean anything by it, Kai-Kai, okay? We're sorry."

Kairi blinked tears away and look at the floor. It was pale pink and blanketed in a thick layer of dust that was only visible if you were hanging your head so low you were almost part of the tiny little balls of fluff littering the said floor.

"It's fine," she murmured.

_Great, now they're going to think _I'm _gay, _she cursed herself silently. _Which I'm not. But that doesn't mean okay for them to slag off anyone who is._

Meaning one person in particular.

"Wow, is that the time!" she exclaimed, her sudden burst of energy gaining fuel from her anger. "It's nearly midnight, I must be getting home."

Selphie frowned slightly. "At… midnight?" she queried. "Kai, are you nuts?"

"Yes, possibly, but I know the way," she beamed, her smile one hundred percent cheap, fake and incredibly tacky upon her otherwise emotionless face. "Bye, folks!" she cheered, grabbing her things, thrusting them in her small bag and exiting Selphie's bedroom.

All Tifa, Yuffie and Selphie heard after that was a quick, "Bye, Mrs Tilmitt, thank you for having me!" and then the front door slammed shut.

* * *

Kairi stormed up to her room and flopped down on her bed. Her father was already asleep and Naminé was in her room. 

She screamed silently into her pillow for a moment or two, the cushion muffling her voice as she let out her anger and rage.

Then, once all the bad thoughts and pent-up fury had been released from her body, she gently unclenched her fists and lay there on her bed for a moment.

She sat up, wiped her eyes, which were probably rimmed in a panda-like fashion with smudged mascara by now, and crossed her room to pick up some cleansing wipes. And she hoped that as she cleansed her face of messy black make-up, the remains of the toothpaste-like face mask and hopefully any new spots that might have been deciding to form, she was also cleaning away any of the stupid things she might have done over the last day.

Kairi let out a long sigh, and then put a typical soppy teenage-girl-ish DVD on. She found some nail polish on her dressing table, and sat up on her bed half watching the cliché-packed DVD and half painting her nails a blinding shade of yellow.

She didn't need Selphie and Yuffie and Tifa to have a typical American sleepover. She could 'pamper herself' just like that- by herself. The DVD was awful, as it turned out, although she should've known that the last five times she got screwed over and sat moping in her room watching it. And as for the nail painting, well, she had to do _something_ at least vaguely interesting whilst listening to blondes with exaggerated chests natter on about 'oh mai gawd, he is lyk sooo fit!'

Of course, in the end, the hero always falls for the geeky girl with glasses whose common habitat is the library. Well, how could he not, because after she takes off her glasses, lets her hair down and gets a makeover from a homosexual stylist wearing tight trousers and a beret, she turns out to be amazingly beautiful, even more so than the bitchy cheerleader ex-girlfriend who ground the heroine's face into the dirt with her high heels.

Oh, how Kairi hated chick-flicks.

Still searching for something better to do once the credits started rolling, she reached out for her diary to jot down a few imaginative ways of torturing every living being on the planet who had ever caused her any discomfort. And that was a hell of a lot of people.

She checked around the room for her schoolbag, which she was sure she had put her diary in that morning. But she couldn't find the bag, so she thought she might've left it at Selphie's. And then she remembered- she had taken a different, smaller bag, containing only her pyjamas, a toothbrush and toothpaste.

So where could her schoolbag be?

A wave of horror rippled through her as she realised; she had left it at Sora's.

History looked set to repeat itself. That is, if she didn't intervene, and very, very quickly.

* * *

**A/N: **yay! so the plot thickens... or at least i think it does. i can't remember. and i don't really care all that much. but... eh... PIE.  
the sentence will be in the next chapter. i promise promise promise this time! honest honest honest! you can sue me if it's not... but i won't give you any money. because i don't have any, fwahahahahaha.  
if i get the sentence up before 1st august, does that still count as by the deadline, even if i don't finish the whole story in time (which i won't)? well, skitts hasn't finished **hers** either. although hers is much better so she has an excuse. but, y'know, i have like, other stoof to do, like learn lines and accidentally hit people with sticks. i "cannot be trusted" with that stick anymore, which i find most unfair /rolleye/

heh. stickeh loik a stick. four reviews fer an update! there are only.. one.. two.. maybe three chapters left. yay!  
xx **some-random-crappy-abbreviation-of-sequizurx **xx


	6. being spiderman

**C**hapter **S**ix  
being **S**piderman (or not)

Window ledges are funny, funny things. So are drainpipes. Who knew such small insignificant plastic creations tacked to the front of buildings could come in so handy?

Unless, of course, you are _not_ Spiderman and so can't use your almighty sticky-web powers to help you climb up to a different level, and have to resort to using your normal human-girl strength and try to shimmy yourself up. Usually failing miserably.

In case you hadn't already guessed, Kairi was no Spiderman. Neither was she a man at all, for last but definitely _not_ least, you sexist pigs, she was a normal human-girl. But minus the strength, as she was incredibly tired and a little embarrassed about climbing up a drainpipe in her nightie, not that there would be anyone to watch her.

And of course, she was a little nervous about breaking into someone's house, but that could barely compare to wandering the streets in pyjamas, which is something people can get arrested for _all the time_.

Kairi faced the brick wall and took a deep breath.

"Right… um…" she murmured anxiously, pondering over which route to take. She knew which window was Sora's, and which window was Sora's mother's, and she used to know which window was Sora's brother Luxord's window before he went to college, but it had probably transformed into a guest room by now.

Or (if Sora's mother was still anything like she was back when Kairi was friends with her son) a room for depositing general crap in. Rikku was good at dumping household objects in the different places. It made finding the cutlery and setting the table a tricky affair.

Kairi took a firm hold of the drainpipe, jumped up and wrapped her legs around it. Being tacked firmly to the solid brick wall, there was no room for her legs behind the drainpipe so all she got were some red scratch marks she would have to blame on the neighbour's cat when she got home.

"Crap," she murmured, sliding back down and eyeing the front of the house again.

It looked a nice enough place (well, it would do, being the actual residential side of Twilight Town rather than a dirty flat crammed in among the cheap vodka stores of the shopping district), so Kairi doubted that anyone had ever tried to break into it before. And if they had done they probably hadn't been successful; it had very good security against burglars.

If she remembered correctly, there was an alarm that was triggered into a beeping stupor anyone dared to brave the porch, not to mention more locks and bolts than you could shake a stick at. Not that shaking a chunk of wood would make much of a difference to chunk of metal anyway, as the metal is harder and stronger and would probably just shake its solid little self right back.

Or, if Kairi remembered _in_correctly, there were three odd pairs of shoes prowling back and forth inside the porch, one with false teeth, the others armed only with common sense (a weapon we all possess anyway, or most of us, at least) and a packet of chocolate buttons playing blind man's bluff on the staircase. One of them would probably fall down and break their necks soon, but Kairi wasn't really all that bothered, because a) as they weren't real, and b) all she cared about at that moment was her diary, and how she could get it back.

The idea of 'breaking in and stealing it' had seemed like the obvious choice twenty minutes ago when she was safely locked in her room painting her nails yellow (like painting the roses red but cooler), but now as she stood outside the house in question it began to feel like a daunting and somewhat nerve-wracking task.

Kairi nibbled her lip anxiously. She had been doing so much of that lately it was a surprise her lips were still in existence and not all chewed away. This was good, but it also meant that they were present to be kissed by whoever decided to force themselves upon them. If a random stranger strolled up to Kairi in the street and jammed his mouth on hers, she would be disgusted, yes, but she would have kissed this person whether she liked it or not.

That was the thing with lips. They couldn't be protected or hidden. Except with some form of 'lipguard', like a 'mouthguard' or 'gumshield' for sports, but for outside your mouth rather than inside. It would have to be worn at all times, except at night when it would probably suffocate you, although if you were desperate enough to need a lipguard then that might help.

Then the next time Sora tried to kiss her, Kairi could laugh as his feeble attempts backfired when he hurt his own lips on her rock-solid lipguard.

Ah, life would be good, and she would make a fortune from the invention. But she would look stupid and everybody would think she was even more of a freak than they already did.

So the only other option was to become Muslim and wear the full-face hijab. Even better still, she wouldn't be allowed any romantic contact with anyone until she was married (to that person).

So that way, Sora wouldn't try to kiss her in the first place.

Ah, life would be even greater. Only, she didn't really feel like a religion change, and covering your whole body all the time would probably get hot and sweaty in summer. Although she did feel that it was better if she stayed fully clothed on the most part from now on, since the incident at school in a tiny dress.

Perhaps, then, it was not great that she was standing outside Sora's house in the middle of the night wearing only her nightie and fluffy slippers, which could seem potentially slutty if perceived in a certain way. Especially if seen with Sora, in Sora's room, in the middle of the night. Although who would be looking there?

Kairi took another deep breath and decided to go for it; she'd never get anywhere if she didn't try.

This time she decided to take a different approach and go up via windowsills. It actually proved to be pretty easy, and she was up outside the window she believed to be Sora's before she knew it. The only problem then was opening the window from the outside without falling off the ledge and/or waking up Sora. Plus certifying that it was actually his room, which she was pretty sure it was, as she had only been in there a few hours previously, although she could have calculated the wrong window.

She tapped on it gently to see if anyone came, which nobody did. This was lucky; as she didn't know what she would have done if somebody had appeared. She was up on the second (meaning third) floor, so she was fairly far off the ground and wasn't eager to try the drop. Nor would she have been thrilled to get caught out, or to dangle and hang until the person at the window had gone away.

So, again, it had been lucky that nobody had come to the window when she knocked.

Kairi flexed her fingers and tried to yank at the window frame. It was wedged shut but she just about managed to get her (banana-yellow) fingernails behind it and yank it with considerable force, snapping most of her (banana-yellow) fingernails in the process. It was a good thing she wasn't a girly-girl and this wasn't a chick-flick, or she would've had to had a crying fest and mourn her tragic losses.

As it were, she didn't really care, and continued to pull the window open until it was wide enough for her to fit through. She had been getting pretty uncomfortable on the windowsill and was just on the verge of falling off, so she clambered inside sharpish, carelessly not thinking to check who was inside.

Fortunately, it was only Sora and he was sprawled lazily across his bed, sleeping like a log… or a regular teenager.

Stepping carefully, Kairi scoured his room for her schoolbag. After ten minutes of uninterrupted searching, she concluded that he had hidden it somewhere so that he could read it later, which meant that he hadn't read it yet. Taking that as a good sign, she began to ponder over the places in which Sora might hide something.

She'd checked his cupboards and drawers already, as well as most other nooks and crannies people stash things away in. So that only left… under his bed!

Kairi flattened herself against the floor and peered under, rotating her head from side to side. Then something caught her eye. It was a large bag, but could it be-

"Kairi?"

Kairi shot bolt upright, hitting her head as she did so.

"OW!" she cried, and then began cradling the bruise with one hand.

"You… alright?" Sora mumbled tiredly, sitting up in his bed.

"Yeah… m'fine," Kairi murmured.

Sora yawned, his mouth opening double the size it normally was.

"How… come you're not…" (here he yawned again) "…asleep?"

Kairi blinked rapidly. Asleep? Why should she be asleep?

"What do you… what are you…" she began suspiciously, watching him carefully as he stretched his arms, his mouth opening widely like a roaring lion.

"Y'know… Kai, I… couldn't… sleep…" Sora mumbled, yawning with exhaustion all the way through. "Kept having… really… weird dreams…"

Kairi tipped her head to one side in confusion.

"Sora, what are you talking about?" she asked sceptically. "Try and go back to sleep," she soothed.

"Whaa?" Sora blinked. "Nuhh… I'm 'wake now… I wanna… wanna play games…"

"Games?" Kairi repeated. "What kind of games?"

Sora pondered for a moment.

"Mononopopoleee," he mumbled. "I dunno, Kai, do I, but… you don't get… to sleep over that much anymores… so we should do… something… fun…"

He paused repeatedly to yawn and stretch.

Kairi's brain began to click slowly into action.

So _he_ thought it was years ago, and Kairi was staying over for a sleepover! Well, that was okay, no harm done. They could have their cute little-kid sleepover and Kairi would steal herself away before he woke up properly and realised she wasn't supposed to be there, and before her dad or her sister woke up and realised she was missing, or even worse, before Sora's mother woke up and found a strange girl in her son's bed.

Of course Rikku would recognise Kairi later, and realise they were probably just having a sleepover like the old days (which was exactly what they _were _doing), but when it really mattered, she wouldn't know her if she had 'me name's Kairi, Mrs Sora's mother' tattooed on her forehead.

And that only gave Kairi an hour or two at most to play with little Sora, who thought he was small and tubby and cute but was actually tall, lanky and jam-packed full of testosterone. And, well, who wouldn't kill for an opportunity like that?

* * *

**A/N: **yay! sorry it's so short, but i had nothing else to write. true, i could have written about them playing 'mononopopolee' but i really am too tired and whatever i had written would have been utter crap. i am really tired and i want to go to bed now so leave me alone please. also i'm sorry i haven't updated in ages which is dumb because the deadline for the contest has just been extended so i should be happy and get typing ever-faster, but no, instead i do three shows and lose my voice and get ill and spend a week in front of the tv doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself. be jealous!  
and yes i know that the sentence isn't here yet, but i know where it's gonna be. and i know how many chapters are left. and you don't so hahahahahaha. also thank you to lamatikah for the idea for this chapter. and for offering to let me live in her shed. and for... something else but i forget what. eh, idc, she never thanks _me_ for anything. betch.  
hope you liked this chapter, the next one will come... soon... hopefully! because the deadline is the 17th august which is the day before i go away so i need it all up by then. well, i do anyway because it's the deadline.. eh..  
anyway, byeee!

xx **le ME **xx


	7. blue bunnies

**C**hapter **S**even  
blue **B**unnies

When Kairi awoke, she felt happy and content. She shuffled around a little, savouring the warmth and comfort the covers brought her. She was reluctant to shift her lazy teenage form to get ready for school, but as Naminé liked to tell her on a regular basis, 'lying around in bed all day won't get you any qualifications'.

Naminé was a bit of a study freak, and always made Kairi do her homework days or weeks even before it was due. This didn't make sense, in a way, as Naminé had been a model student (which could only be expected), yet she chose to drop out of school and get a part-time job. So, really, she was a hypocrite and had no right to force Kairi out of bed.

And if Kairi stuck to that argument, she would get to stay in bed a little longer. Maybe even all day, if she resisted Naminé so much that the blonde got bored and went to play peek-a-boo with Yuna instead. The toddler was much more appealing than Kairi in the mornings anyway.

Yet, for some reason, Kairi couldn't hear Naminé yelling at her to get up and come down for breakfast. Nor could she hear her radio alarm clock telling her that it was probably going to snow and there would be hailstones the size of her head and the apocalypse was coming and everybody was going to die.

Which was probably a good thing, as it was a load of crap anyway.

"Sora! Sora! It's time to get up now!" a voice called up the stairs.

Kairi frowned in confusion. Then she felt something stir next to her.

"OH MY GOD!" she screamed, and then realised that she had probably just woken him up.

"Hmmnn?" Sora muttered, rolling over in his pit but not opening his eyes. "Whaaa?"

Kairi mentally kicked herself, then tiptoed forward carefully and stroked the brunet's forehead.

"Nothing… nothing… go back to sleep…" she soothed calmly. "Go… back… to… sleep…"

He seemed to oblige, as she go no further reaction from him. Satisfied, she pondered over her next move.

She eyed the room in which she was standing. Sora's room, undoubtedly, as it was full of Sora's things. The floor was layered thickly in sweets and candy and other food items Sora had obtained after raiding the kitchen the previous night. They had had themselves a proper midnight feast, just as any other preteen kids would have. And that was what they had been, sugar-high children playing games and swapping supposedly hilarious 'you-had-to-be-there' stories.

Kairi had to admit that she had enjoyed herself. She had enjoyed becoming a kid again, even if only for a few hours, and she had enjoyed spending so much time laughing and joking with Sora after about three years.

And the best thing was that Sora wouldn't remember it in the morning; as he had been in a sleepy state and so would just assume he was dreaming if he still recollected it come his awakening.

But that was also a sad thing. He wouldn't know about the great time he and his old best friend had had playing games and stuffing their faces with butter popcorn and sour worms. It was lucky Rikku had such a large supply of sugary goods stashed away, or they might have gone hungry. Or just had to nibble on carrot sticks instead. And no kids at sleepovers want that.

Hastily, Kairi made an attempt to tidy the room. She stowed wrappers and crumbs in the bin and took great care in packing away the Monopoly (Mononopopolee) board without spilling all the houses everywhere or crumpling up the fake money notes.

Sora's room was probably tidier than it had been in a long time. But now what? What was her next great plot?

While mentally kicking The Wheel Of Almighty Plans (The Wheel Of Witty Answers' evil counterpart) to get her brain whirring into action, Kairi's eyes locked onto the window. It was still open, as she had left it last night.

_Escape out window._ Perfect, The Wheel Of Almighty Plans had an ingenious answer for her first time round.

"Great plan, if I do say so myself," she murmured, and with one last fleeting glance at the snoozing teenager, she leapt out of the window and shimmied herself down the drainpipe of doom.

She regretted her haste when she hit the floor, though. After falling backwards she had grazed her lower back and her bare feet were throbbing from rubbing along the brick wall as she slid down.

Ignoring her injuries, she scoped the sky. It was almost perfect daylight, only a few notches away from idyllic early morning sunshine.

Praying that the fog and shadows of dawn would hold long enough for her to get home unseen, she dive-bombed over the garden gate and charged down the street. She was fully aware of her attire, and understood that some people might find it strange that a girl with fiery red hair and a blue bunny-patterned nightie was running past their house early in the morning, but they would have to get over it. If anybody asked, she was out for a jog. Yes, yes, that would do.

"I'm out for a jog!" Kairi yelled at a paperboy. He had been shuffling along at snail's pace with his cart full of parcels, marvelling in this extraordinary sight.

Several other people seemed to find her strange too; various old ladies out walking their grouchy pug/terrier crossbreds, kids around her age smoking and stabbing themselves with needles, but then of course, there were various fitness freaks in neon tracksuits and sweatbands. They all gave her mutual nods as they puffed past, understanding her eagerness to get fit and not perplexed by her pyjama-like attire in the slightest.

Her blue bunnies looked nicer than their traffic-light Lycra creations, anyhow.

Before long, her house came into view. The sun was even higher in the sky now so there was no way her family weren't already awake and wondering where she was. Either that or they would assume that the empty chair at the breakfast table was intended for Yuna when she had grown out of her high chair.

Planning ahead is the key to a long and fruitful life, after all.

* * *

"Kairi Papadopolous, what the _hell_ do you think you're doing!?" Naminé yelled. 

Kairi shrugged lightly. "Going inside?" she suggested.

"Kairi! Where've you _been_?" Naminé enquired, prodding her younger sister's shoulder.

Kairi paused and thought for a moment, a pleased smile spreading across her face as she came to realise something.

"I've been at Selphie's," she answered clearly. "You _know_ that."

Naminé looked upwards in despair and then back down to glare angrily at her sister. "No you _haven't_, Kairi!" she cried. "Mrs Tilmitt called and _told_ us that you'd left, she said that you'd had 'a bit of a tiff' with Selphie and the other girls and that you were on your way home. How do you think I felt when you didn't turn up, not knowing where you were?"

Kairi blinked, taking everything in.

"You… just you?" she queried. "You didn't tell Dad?"

Naminé didn't answer for a moment, and gazed at the younger girl sadly.

"I thought you might be with Sora, and you only agreed to the sleepover so that we wouldn't notice you were gone," she murmured quietly.

Kairi eyed the floor. "So you thought I did the same thing you did," she mumbled slowly.

"Yes, and that was a _mistake_," Naminé added, and then gasped her own words.

Kairi stared at her sister, an ugly pattern of shock and horror arranged neatly on her face.

"I didn't mean it, you know I didn't mean it!" the blonde corrected herself hastily. "I only meant that… well… you should know better, Kairi!"

Now it was Kairi's turn to babble hurriedly.

"Nonono, you don't understand, I _wasn't_ with Sora!" she explained quickly. "I mean… well, I was _technically_, but it's not the way it sounds and nothing happened. It was really weird, Nami, I don't know how to explain it, but it was like it was in a _dream_ or something…"

Naminé breathed out heavily.

"Oh, Kairi," she sighed, rolling her pretty blue eyes. "You're not in _love _are you?"

The redhead looked taken-aback, and realised her sister had misinterpreted the meaning of her words.

"Oh, nonono, you've got it wrong _again_, see, I thought he was reading my diary but then there was a drainpipe and it got really annoying but I got up it in the end 'cause I used the window ledges as well and I broke most of my nails and then when I was inside he woke up but he wasn't properly awake if you get what I mean and I thought that I needed to get out of there which was _really_ bad 'cause I hadn't even searched his room yet and then I didn't 'cause he was talking about playing Monopoly so I had to eat lots of gummy worms-"

She had to stop her story (which didn't make any sense anyway) because she had burst out crying. Before she knew it, tears were cascading down her cheeks in watery rivulets, but luckily Naminé was on hand and pulled out a wad of tissues from her pocket.

"Aw, Kairi, it's okay," Naminé soothed, wrapping a steady arm around her sobbing little sister. "Dad's at work and Yunie's asleep. Let's go into the kitchen, I'll make us some hot chocolate and you can tell me everything."

* * *

Normally, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, Kairi would be out at the library studying or with friends, shopping in town. Naminé would be with Yuna, of course, possibly at the park with a whole loaf of bread to throw at any curious ducks in self-defence. 

Hercules would be at work, in a call centre, selling things over the phone that nobody really wanted. Like double-glazing. Nobody _really_ wants double-glazing, and nobody wise would buy it over the phone anyway. In fact, call companies that offered double-glazing got turned down so often they probably didn't sell double-glazing at all. It would be pretty pointless, anyway, because nobody would buy it.

So all in all, Hercules loved his job. He got to sit around all day saying 'hello, would you be interested in double glazing?' and 'okay, thank you for your time'. Although he didn't really have to say that last bit as he was only saying it to a dead phone, the potential customer having already hung up, the prolonged beeping echoing down his ear.

However captivating and challenging his job was, he still much preferred his lunch breaks. He usually spent them in the building canteen, getting a greasy burger, a slab of overcooked pizza that looked like a brick, or occasionally, just occasionally, a salad. But it was very rare that he ate like a rabbit when such glorious fatty foods were practically raining onto his plate, and he had to eat them up, up, up.

And because he didn't want to lose his muscular physique to fatty foods and the lazy slob attitude to life, he spent three hours every day working out at the gym. Sometimes even longer if the mood took him. He also had a personal trainer who helped him keep in shape.

Over time, Hercules developed a close bond with his personal trainer. They became good friends, the kind of blokes who swapped manly stories and went pulling girls together, treating them like objects, getting them drunk, sleeping with them and never calling them back.

Only Hercules and Beast never did those sorts of things, because they weren't sexist pigs, and Hercules had a family at home. Instead, they went out to blitzball games or stayed in 'exercising'.

Kairi and Naminé knew of their father's extensive fitness routine with his personal trainer, but they didn't know quite what it entailed.

Until one day, Hercules decided to take Beast back to his house to do some 'weight-lifting', unaware that both of his daughters were home.

They had just burst through the front door, locked in a passionate embrace (as all personal trainers and their clients are at some point during their session) when the blonde and the redhead walked into the hallway, froze and gasped.

"Dad!" Kairi cried. "Why are you bringing strange men home in the middle of the day?"

"Yuna's right here!" Naminé pointed out.

"Who the hell is he, anyway?" Kairi asked.

Hercules and Beast exchanged looks.

"Um, Kairi, Naminé, this is Beast," he explained. "He's… he's my boyfriend."

Kairi gasped in horror but Naminé looked pleased.

"Oh, Dad, it's so great that you've finally found someone!" she shrilled, and trapped her father in a hug, and her potential stepfather in a firm handshake. "I mean, you've been out for nearly three years and haven't even introduced us to anyone yet!"

The two men exchanged wry glances again.

"Actually, your father and I have been dating for most of that time," Beast replied gruffly, scratching behind his furry ear.

Both sisters gaped.

"Really? And you never told us?" Naminé exclaimed. "Why not?"

Hercules glanced fleetingly at Kairi, who was now sat on the stairs sulking crossly.

"Because we weren't sure how you would take it," he explained, eyes still fixed on his youngest daughter.

Kairi didn't look up, but she'd heard what he'd said and knew that he had a point.

"Kairi?" Beast grumbled kindly. "It's nice to finally meet you."

The redhead looked up and glared at him, then looked back down again. Beast's face looked hurt, but Kairi jutted out her chin to show that she defiantly didn't care.

"So… I guess you're not okay with it?" Hercules enquired carefully.

"Well _I _think it's great!" Naminé beamed. "You make such a cute couple!"

Both males chuckled uncomfortably, Hercules blushing a light shade of sugar-pink and Beast scratching behind his ear again while eyeing the rest of the hallway with pretend interest.

_As if he's never been here before, conniving git_, Kairi thought bitterly.

"I'm going out," she announced, pushing past the three human obstacles to reach the front door.

"Oh, no you're not," Hercules countered, catching his daughter by the arm and tugging her back into his view. "We have something to tell you, girls."

Kairi and Naminé eyed each other worriedly.

"What is it?" the elder sister prompted curiously.

"Well…" Hercules began, swapping eye contact with his boyfriend. "You see… the thing is…"

"Get on with it!" Kairi urged sourly.

Naminé glared at her sibling and gave her a sharp nudge in the ribs, then turned at smiled the couple again. "Yeah, you can trust us with anything," she assured them encouragingly.

"Alright, well the thing is, your father and I…" Beast trailed off, and scratched behind his ear for support.

_Your ear can't tell you what to do now, you evil bastard_, Kairi smirked to herself.

"We're getting married!" Hercules finished happily.

Naminé let out a wild yelp of joy before she dived on both of them and smothered them in hugs.

Kairi stayed sat on the stairs, scratching flaky white paint from the banister while thinking up evil tortures for her father and his new fiancé.

Not that she was a naturally nasty person, as you have probably deducted from the rest of the story, she was just in a very bad mood and not eager to add yet another secret to the silent pages of her diary.

Because she had enough secrets in there already, and she didn't need any mores bulletins to add to her list of facts about her life to hide from the rest of the world.

Not that she could have done anyway, as she didn't even have her diary any more. Her plan to get it back had failed, and Sora would read it and find everything out.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

* * *

**A/N:** yay another chapter dead and gone. there are only two left now /gaspe/! and i promise that the sentence will be in the next chapter, chapter 8. wow chapter 8! i feel so proud, this is the most chapters i've ever done of anything! woohoo! well anyway i knows i will definitely finish and because i'm so close to the end i feel spurred to write more and faster so i will almost definitely be done by the deadline yayyy!  
also: kairi's (and naminé's and hercules's) surname is papadopolous because i know that hercules is greek (or at least i think he is, 'cause his father zeus is a greek god and stuff, right?) and i couldn't think of any greek surnames apart from papadopolous. lol. tis a good surname, no?  
and lol beast is evil 'cause he scratches his ear /shock horror/! yeah and stuff okay bye now

xx **mai SHOO** xx


	8. you'll ruin your shoes

**C**hapter **E**ight  
you'll ruin your **S**hoes

As bitter and sour and angry as she was feeling, Kairi would have appreciated some company. She could have stayed cooped up in her room at home, where she knew her sister, her father and her father's new fiancé would repeatedly come and offer her something to eat and ask if she 'wanted to talk'. But instead she had opted to make a haughty exit from the house (slamming the front door on her way out, naturally) and storm off to the park, where she sat glumly on the swings, scuffing the earth with the tips of her trainers.

She looked up and noticed she was getting a lot of glares from parents and young children. They got annoyed when teenagers sat on the swings and moped, or sometimes started smoking, because there were only two swings and if a moody teenager was taking up one of them, nobody would be able to use that one and nobody would want to use the other.

Also, the bored mothers were secretly craving a cigarette themselves and wanted to dump their children on the swings so that they could escape and chat to the other mums and get their lighters out.

But Kairi wouldn't have moved even if the irritable mothers pushed their toddler-filled prams right up to where she was sitting and asked her politely. She simply would have burst into tears, or maybe started shouting at them for ruining her life. Because now that she was in distraught-teenager mode, the only thing that made her awful, tragic, movie-worthy life worth living was that swing on which she had placed her rear.

It was her pride and joy, her only sanctuary. Without its cold chains and scratchy black seat (complete with indents that showed where her backside was supposed to go, as if she couldn't guess), she would probably throw herself on the floor somewhere and die. Or just cry a lot, get her front very dirty and have a lot of old women shuffle towards her and ask if she was all right, dear.

All with one simple fleeting glance, Kairi managed to express to all the irritated mothers scathingly checking their watches and giving her evils that she was _not_ going to move, she planned to stay here for the rest of her life if possible, so could they go away and stop staring at her please?

It seemed to work, because they went away. Either that or they finally decided they _needed_ that cigarette and so dumped their kids on the only partially safe seesaw instead.

After a little while, all the timid kids evaporated too, hopefully to float away as a big grey cloud of doom and rain on somebody else's parade.

Kairi thought fleetingly of Yuna, sat at home bashing things with her chubby little fists and stampeding from room to room demanding people to read books to her or play dressing up.

Naminé usually obliged and sometimes managed to convince Kairi to play too, and they would spend the rest of the day dressed up as maids or fairies in too-small frilly dresses doing Princess Yuna's bidding.

She wondered what they would all be doing now. Crowded round the tv, probably, watching football or some crappy soap where everybody cheated on everybody else and then killed each other. Kairi wished she could live in a soap. Her life was enough like one so far anyway.

Her father was gay, engaged to a dog-like creature with a permanent itch behind his ear, and her mother had moved to Hollow Bastion with a guy she hardly knew as soon as she found out her husband was rethinking his sexuality. Not to mention her ex-best friend was trying to get into her good books (meaning pants) because he was on the rebound from his psycho maniac ex-girlfriend who had viciously attacked Kairi and given her several scars.

Translated into plain text, Kairi's father was engaged to another man, her mother had moved away, and her ex-best friend was being nice to her because needed help with a project.

When she sifted through the mess of her life logically, it didn't seem so bad at all.

"Hey," Sora greeted, clambering on the swing next to her.

She hadn't even heard him coming, so she did a double take and then frowned a little. "What are you doing here?" she asked sourly.

"I came to see you," he smiled kindly, trying to catch her eye. He caught it and let his deep blue eyes glitter mischievously.

For a moment Kairi was captivated by his smile, but she soon came back to earth.

"Well, I don't want to see you," she replied flatly, turning her head away.

Sora laughed. "I don't care. I'll follow you wherever you go," he informed her matter-of-factly.

"Unless?" she prompted.

"Unless… you tell me what's wrong," Sora finished, beamed proudly at his ingenious method of weaving the question into the conversation.

Kairi frowned slightly.

"I couldn't say," she murmured, glancing away from the boy again.

"I know _something's_ wrong," Sora pressed. "Here you are now, obviously having cried your eyes out, and you broke into my house in the middle of the night. I don't get people doing that every day, you know."

Kairi gasped.

"You know about that?" she cried, horror-stricken.

Sora raised an eyebrow. "Did you think I wouldn't notice a girl climbing in through my window, playing board games with me and eating a fair chunk of my food?" he enquired.

Kairi scowled. "You ate most of it," she muttered bitterly, then turned to face him with a worried expression on her face. "So, does this mean you remember it _all_?"

"Every single second," he confessed proudly. "And I loved every single second too," he added, grinning.

Kairi let out a deep breath. "That just makes things even _worse_," she sighed. "You weren't _supposed _to remember. You weren't supposed to wake up at all."

"Well did you think I was daft? That I would just let you turn my room upside down going through all my things?" he asked. "I never thought you'd do something like that, after how you treated me when I did the same to you. When I actually didn't."

"I wasn't looking for _your_ stuff," Kairi explained, glaring at him. "What would I want with your stuff anyway? I'd probably catch something."

Sora rolled his eyes. "What _were_ you looking for, then?" he enquired curiously.

She scoffed. "Like you don't already know!"

"No, actually, I don't."

She pulled a face and looked away.

"Kairi…" Sora began softly. "Why don't you tell me what's wrong?"

She thought for a moment. She supposed she _could _explain everything to him, about her family problems and whatnot, but she didn't see the point. He wouldn't be able to help her and would probably just spread the juicy gossip all around school on Monday.

But on the other hand, she had spilled her guts out to Naminé earlier that morning about her Sora-related problems, so why not do the same with her problems at home to someone else?

She left a slight pause, adding to the silence for dramatic effect, while she began to mentally piece together her words.

Sora wrongly took her muteness for ignorance, so he added, "I'm really sorry about that kiss, you know."

Kairi stared at him. She had almost completely forgotten about that.

"I got the wrong idea. I'm sorry," he apologised. "Can you forgive me, Kai?"

She smiled coyly. "Don't worry about it," she replied. "It was my fault, really. I made an all-out play for you yesterday, after all."

She watched his expression carefully as she spoke. Instead of merging into a self-conceited smirk heavy with arrogance, his face stayed relaxed and calm, albeit a little confused.

"Yeah, I still don't understand it. What was that all about?" he questioned, perplexed.

Kairi took a deep breath. "Well… I don't think it makes that much sense myself, really, but when you started talking to me the other day, I somehow came to the conclusion that it was a bet, y'know, and you had to get me to go out with you by the end of the week or something dumb like that," she explained, making flamboyant hand gestures as she if she were trying to mould the appropriate words out of thin air.

Sora looked offended. "Kai, you know I'd never do anything like that!" he exclaimed defensively. "I mean, you're not an _object_."

"Well, I didn't know what to think at the time!" she protested. "And seeing how we hadn't spoken for ages, I figured there had to be a good reason behind it, and I couldn't come up with anything else."

He laughed slightly. "_That_ was the best you could think of?" he snorted. "Honestly, Kairi, I don't know where you get these ideas from."

She breathed out lightly and scuffed her feet along the ground.

"You'll ruin your shoes," Sora pointed out.

"I don't care," she answered flatly, sticking her chin out like a spoilt child.

He rolled his eyes again. "So, anyway, what did you do once you'd supposedly discovered my wicked intentions?" he smirked.

She flashed a glare at him.

"Ha ha, very funny," she scowled. "After that, I asked Naminé to give me a makeover."

"A makeover?" Sora repeated, frowning a little. "What did you want a makeover for? You look pretty as you are."

Kairi felt herself blushing so raised her eyebrows at him to cover up her embarrassment.

"Sure, whatever," she brushed him off. "Anyway, she put practically a whole box of make-up on me, and then she straightened my hair at least a hundred times over…"

She went on to tell him about the tight pink dress that felt like it was crushing her ribcage, the confused stares of all their classmates, the awful sensation of feeling like a bunny-boiler, and Olette's sharp claws digging their way under several layers of her skin.

"But I still don't get it," Sora objected. "Why did you do all of that in the first place? What were you hoping to achieve?"

"You sound like an evaluation sheet," Kairi informed him. "What could you have improved on, what would change if you were to do this experiment again?"

"Kairi!" Sora groaned. "Just tell me!"

She sighed heavily, and then replied, "I wanted to knock you off guard."

He pondered for a moment. "_Knock me off guard_? What d'you mean, _knock me off guard_?" he enquired, sounding more irritated than he meant to.

"I wanted to… to confuse you, I suppose," she replied thoughtfully, as if she wasn't completely sure herself. "I figured that if someone was betting that you couldn't get me to go out with you by the end of the week or whatever, then they must have thought that I would ignore you and try to avoid you. And you must have been expecting that too, I mean, you should have guessed I'd hardly play straight into your outstretched arms. So I decided to do exactly the opposite of what whoever had invented the bet would be assuming I would do. So I concocted a plan, and then I draped myself all over you, and the rest played out itself. It was easy, really. Until Olette came along."

Sora looked at the floor sheepishly.

"Oh yeah, Olette," he murmured.

"That was when I realised I'd got it all wrong," Kairi continued sadly. "And it wasn't a bet or anything like that at all, you were just on the rebound from breaking up with her."

He shot up and stared at her.

"Rebound? _Rebound_?" he cried, a look of bemusement and horrification plastered to his face. "Kairi, no way am I on the rebound! I didn't even _like _Olette! _She's _the one who was the bet, not you!"

He stopped abruptly, obviously having surprised himself with his own words.

"You went out with her… for a bet?" Kairi repeated in disbelief.

"No, it was a dare, really," Sora corrected himself. "And she knew about it, don't get me wrong, I wasn't leading her on or anything. It was her idea, actually."

Kairi frowned in confusion. "How d'you mean?" she asked, her forehead creasing as she tried to solve the complex puzzle for herself, to no avail.

"Well, her friends are friends with my friends so I've seen her around, and… I don't know how it happened really, but they kind of… forced us together. It was convenient for them when we all hung out as a group, I guess."

Kairi nodded slowly. "Why did you agree to it if you didn't even like her?" she queried.

He shrugged helplessly. "It's not like I didn't _try_, but we both knew we would get phased out of the group if we both stayed single, so we had to at least _pretend_ to like each other," he explained. "I'm not like you, Kairi, you know."

She gazed at him, cogs whirring around in her brain as she tried to decipher what he meant.

"I can't slot in with just anybody. I'm not that good at making new friends," he filled in for her glumly.

She scoffed. "But Sora, you're one of the most popular boys in the whole school!" she pointed out. "Heaps of people would give their right arm and left leg or any other random assortment of detachable limbs to be where I am right now."

"And where's that?" he asked her softly.

She blinked rapidly. She had meant sat next to him on some swings, of course, but he had got her thinking. Mentally, emotionally, regarding their relationship with one another, where _were_ they?

As if he knew exactly what she was puzzling over, Sora moved closer to her, shuffling his swing sideways with his feet until the chains on which their seats were hanging from mashed together with a pretty _chink_. He leant his head closer to hers too, and moved his hand from keeping himself steady on the swing to holding hers, their fingers lacing together as she adjusted her hand away from the chain too.

Before either of them knew what they were doing, their lips were pressed together, interlocking as they felt a connection sizzle between them, a bond stronger than friendship, stronger than anything else they had ever known.

And then they drew apart, breathless, gazing deeply into each other's eyes.

"Sora, I…" she trailed off.

"I'm sorry. It was my fault, it just seemed like one of those moments, is all," Sora apologised hastily.

"One of those moments?" Kairi repeated questioningly.

He shrugged uncomfortably. "You know, where there's two people, and one of them says something deep, and then there's a long silence where they gaze into each other's eyes, and then they kiss, and triumphant romantic music plays in the background," he rambled.

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"And 'where's that' is _deep_, is it?" she smirked.

"It could be!" he protested defensively, and then they both burst out laughing.

"Oh, Sora, I've missed you," she informed him happily, tugging him up off the swings.

"I've missed you too," he replied honestly, obliging her commands, and then twirling her around.

They stood there for a moment, gazing at each other blissfully, smiling wryly and giggling every so often.

"So pray do tell, where _are_ we, exactly?" Sora asked, eventually breaking the peaceful silence.

Kairi grinned coyly, knowing full well what he meant but deciding to tease him for just a little longer.

"Well, let's see…" she began, smiling mischievously. "We're in a park intended for small children, and there are swings, a roundabout and a climbing frame, then there's a seesaw and slide…"

"Oh, Kairi," Sora groaned again, and then grinned alongside her, grabbed her hands and together they spun around and around and around without needing a roundabout.

As they came to a stop, he put his arm around her, partially to steady her, partially to steady himself. When the world stopped spinning behind their eyes, he asked her yet again what was wrong, and why she had been crying when he found her.

She looked up at him slowly, and then shook his arm off.

"It's not important," she decided, walking back over to the swings and sitting down again.

"Of course it is, if it makes you so upset," he pointed out, planting himself down next to her.

She remained mute, racking her brains for something to say.

"And don't go thinking up silly excuses, either," he scolded. "The Wheel Of Witty Answers can't help you now."

Kairi blinked through her lashes and stared at him.

"I'd forgotten you knew about that," she murmured.

"_Knew_ about it?" he repeated. "We invented it together, to use against adults!"

Kairi smiled at the memory of younger Sora trying to make her envision a big gold and red wheel spinning around behind her eyelids, glittering and sparkling like a disco ball, landing on an answer to help her out of a tricky situation.

"Not against each other," older Sora finished. "Please, Kairi, tell me what's wrong. I might be able to help."

"You wouldn't understand," she told him matter-of-factly.

He looked her straight in her violet-blue eyes. "Try me," he offered.

Kairi nibbled her lip anxiously, and finally decided to give it a go. If he didn't understand, what did it matter? She knew she could trust him now that they were friends again. She should have trusted him earlier.

"Well… you see…" she began, her voice wavering a little. He could tell she was uneasy with this topic, so he moved again so that he could put an arm around her.

"My dad's met someone," she confessed finally.

She felt Sora's arm around her shoulders begin to slide away.

"That's it?" he asked. "Your dad's met someone?"

"See? I _knew_ you wouldn't understand!" she cried tearfully, turning away from him.

"Hey, don't cry," he soothed, replacing the arm around her again. "I didn't mean it, I'm sorry. So what's wrong with this guy your dad's seeing?"

Kairi froze.

"What did you just say?" she asked, standing up slowly, eyes fixed securely on him as she did so.

"I…" Sora murmured, unsure of what he had done wrong.

"How did you know?" she whispered.

"Know what?" he asked, frowning slightly.

"That my dad was _gay_!" she shouted angrily, causing a few scantily clad preteen girls on the other side of the park to look up and snigger childishly at them.

Sora stood up to face her from equal height.

"What d'you mean?" he frowned. "I thought it was obvious."

She took a step back in horror.

"Yeah? And I thought I could _trust_ you!" she cried.

He tipped his head to one side. "You _can_ trust me, Kai," he insisted, taking a step closer to her as if he planned to hug and reassure her.

"Get off me!" she exclaimed when he tried. "I can't _ever_ trust you _again_!"

"Why not?" he enquired. "What have I done now?"

She gritted her teeth and breathed heavily as she glared at him menacingly.

"You know _exactly_ what you've done!" she snapped. "You read my diary! _Again_!"

Sora looked taken aback. "What? Of course I haven't!" he argued, and then a look of realisation spread across his face like butter on toast. "Is _that_ what you were looking for when you broke into my house? Your diary?"

Kairi looked flustered, embarrassed at being caught out. "Yes… and no. I was looking for my schoolbag too!" she replied defensively. "I left it at your house yesterday, don't act like you don't know!"

"I do know," he answered calmly. "But I swear to you, Kairi, I didn't look inside it and I definitely didn't read your diary. I didn't even know it was in there!"

She folded her arms across her chest. "Oh, really? So you _would _have read it if you'd known it was in there?" she accused.

"What?" he exclaimed. "Of course not!"

"Don't _lie_!" she shrieked tearfully.

He took a step backwards, exasperated.

"Kairi," he started slowly, consoling himself. "Please, please, listen to me. I did _not_ go through your things, and I did _not _read your diary. I promise."

She watched him carefully. "Then how did you know about my dad being gay?" she enquired. "Is that the bit you read last time, the bit I wrote about him coming out?"

Sora frowned, and then replied, "No, Kairi, I've told you, and I'll tell you again and again, I didn't read anything that last time! I was just picking it up off the floor to put it away, I swear!"

"I don't believe you," Kairi told him flatly.

He sighed sadly. "Look, I… I did think about it," he confessed, brushing off her evil glare. "I looked at it, and it got me thinking. You had been acting really funny around then, d'you remember? And you wouldn't tell me what was wrong. So I… so I thought about finding out for myself."

"I hate you," she murmured sourly.

He ignored her and continued strongly. "But when I realised what I was thinking, I told myself, 'I can't do this, it would never work out. She's my _best friend_.' So I didn't, and only went to move it off the floor in case someone stepped on it!"

Kairi shook her head in disbelief. "Well then, how did you know?" she queried again, her voice rising with exasperation.

He sighed deeply.

"Three years ago, you were out running an errand or something when I went to your house to see if you were in," he began slowly. "Which you weren't. Your dad came to the door and told me you were out. I thought he looked really stressed out, so I asked him if he was alright. Then he invited me into the sitting room."

"Oh my God, my dad tried it on with my best friend!" Kairi shrieked, causing the girls on the other side of the park to look up and giggle in an irritating high-pitched manner again.

"No, of course not," Sora snapped, rolling his eyes. "We sat down, and he asked me if I could give him some advice."

He checked Kairi to see how she was reacted. It looked as though she was still deep in thought.

"You mean… he told _you_ before he told Naminé, Mum or me?" she blinked in confusion. "But why would he do that?"

Sora shrugged. "Needed a man's opinion, I suppose," he answered importantly, thumping his chest with one fist.

Kairi snorted. "Yeah, whatever," she laughed, and then her face became more serious again. "Maybe he wanted you to break it to me gently."

Sora shook his head. "No, the opposite!" he divulged. "He knew you wouldn't support him, and he asked me to keep it quiet. Said he needed to tell you and your sister himself."

"What about Mum?" Kairi prompted.

"He'd already told her. That was when they first started arguing, I think," Sora replied.

Kairi looked glumly at her feet. "Well, what the point in him telling you at all if he didn't want you to tell me?"

"He wanted me to help him tell you," he explained logically. "He thought Naminé would take it alright once she'd got over the fact that he and your mum wouldn't be together any more, but he knew you would fight it, avoid it…"

"…and keep it a secret," Kairi finished for him, nodding guiltily. "I've been an awful daughter, haven't I?"

Sora smiled sympathetically. "You just found it harder to deal with," he reasoned. "Did Naminé take it okay in the end?"

Kairi nodded sadly. "Yeah, she was fine. Supportive, even. But she had her own problems to deal with at the time," she replied sullenly. It was only after the words had escaped her mouth that she realised she'd let out too much.

"What do you mean?" Sora asked curiously, frowning slightly.

Before Kairi could try to think up an excuse, her phone began to ring.

"Sorry," she muttered to Sora, tugging the contraption out of her pocket and stabbing at the green button.

"Hello?" she greeted the inanimate machine.

"Kairi, something's happened," a familiar voice rang down the line, the echoes frantic and distraught. "I need you at the hospital, quick!"

* * *

**A/N: **yayyy! i think all of my a/ns have started with 'yayy'. except maybe in the first coupla chapters. i can't remember. and i don't really care all that much either. all i care about is that yayy another chapter is finished! and the next one will be the last! and i finally used the sentence, yay! i can now officially be counted as a contestant! although i was counted anyway, but y'know, now i've actually done what the contest was all about. and it's nearly finished yay!  
note to self: shut the hell up and stop saying yay. 

yay! xx **YAY!** xx yayyyy!!!

_yay._


	9. droopy flowers

**C**hapter **N**ine  
droopy **F**lowers

The chair was itchy and uncomfortable.

This was perhaps the wrong thing to be thinking about, yet it was the main stream of thought running through Kairi's head nevertheless. She wanted to concentrate on the problem at hand, of the awful chain of events that would occur if things didn't play out in their favour.

Naminé was crying, as could only be expected. Hercules looked pretty cut up too, and even Beast seemed worried and concerned.

Kairi didn't know how to act or what to do with herself. She wanted to cry and sob and pray, but part of her knew that this wouldn't help. She wanted to hug Naminé and tell her everything would be alright, but that wasn't strictly true. Besides, she didn't want to set her sister off again, as the blonde seemed to be calming down now, and simply sat on her chair silently, tucked up in a ball with her knees touching her chin, rocking herself from side to side.

Tears bubbled up in Kairi's eyes, threatening to spill. She stood up and dashed hurriedly out of the waiting room in search of the nearest toilets. When she finally stumbled across a ladies' that wasn't out of order, she entered, locked herself in a cubicle and let herself burst into tears. She didn't know how long she sat there crying, but it was with much reluctance that she finally came out, knowing that if she stayed much longer her family would get worried and Naminé, being the only other female, would be sent in search of her, and the blonde had plenty of other things to be thinking about at that moment.

Watching her timid reflection in the mirror that seemed to stretch widthways across the entire span of the wall, she crept closer, staring straight into her own eyes. Once warm purple and sparkly, they were now red and bloodshot from crying. Kairi yanked some paper towels out of the dispenser and fiercely rubbed her pale face with them until her skin was red raw and throbbing. Contrary to what she had been aiming to do, her eyes were still tender looking, and it seemed to be even clearer than before that she had been in tears previously.

She tried to smile at her reflection as a sign of reassurance, but failed miserably. When her lips began to curl up slightly, hinting at a possible grin, she felt a pang of guilt and shame and hang to squeeze her eyes tight shut to stop herself from crying again.

How could she even _attempt_ to smile, when she knew deep down that this was all her fault? If she hadn't stormed off to the park in a sulk, her father and Beast wouldn't have questioned the idea of them getting married, Naminé wouldn't have tried to assure them that Kairi would come around and they shouldn't forfeit their happiness just because she has trouble adjusting to new things, and Yuna wouldn't have toddled her way up the stairs and into Naminé's room because she was bored and everybody was too busy to play with her.

It was only after they heard the screams that they realised something was wrong and charged up the stairs at full speed, only to find the toddler sprawled across the floor, writhing in agony, with Naminé's red-hot straightening irons lying next to her, as well as an almost-empty aerosol can labelled 'Dis Hairspray Iz Da Shizz', which Kairi remembered she had left perched precariously on the edge of Naminé's desk after she had picked it up.

So the way Kairi saw it, it was all her fault that Yuna was now in the emergency room with blackened burns on her arms, doctors crowding around her. She wasn't even three years old yet; she didn't deserve to go through such tortures, nobody did.

Naminé was blaming herself for not paying closer attention to the tufty-haired toddler, no matter how many times anyone tried to assure her otherwise. Kairi knew that they all secretly thought it was her fault too, but they were too kind to say anything.

She took one last fleeting glance at her reflection in the mirror, hoping to see an optimistic or hopeful expression on her face, but to no avail. Her face was as distressed and unhappy as ever.

Back in the waiting room, her father gave her a weak smile, obviously noticing the redness around his daughter's violet eyes.

"Everything will be alright," he declared, because nobody had said so yet, and at least one person is supposed to say that at some point while waiting for news.

Naminé coughed and spluttered and started crying again. Kairi took a seat next to her, putting an arm around her sister and stroking her long blonde hair comfortingly.

"He's right, N-Nami…" she stumbled helplessly, doing an awful job of consoling her sibling. "Honestly…"

Naminé sobbed into the redhead's shoulder, staining her t-shirt with teardrops.

"Yes, we've just got to keep our chins up," Beast proclaimed, agonisingly positive. "Things will always work out for the best in the end."

He turned and smiled at Hercules for a second, and Hercules smiled back.

Kairi was outraged.

"How can you think about yourselves at a time like this?" she cried, leaping from her itchy, uncomfortable seat. "You're so selfish I can hardly believe it! I mean look at you, exchanging lovey-dovey glances with each other when we're _supposed_ to thinking about _Yuna_."

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Naminé screeched, glaring angrily at her sister. "We _are_ thinking about Yuna, can't you see that? We're thinking about her so much our heads are going to explode, so why don't you just _shut up_?"

Kairi stared at the blonde in disbelief. Naminé had never lashed out at her before, not even when they were bickering little children arguing over the last cupcake.

"Naminé, why don't you go and get a drink of water?" their father suggested calmly.

"No, it's fine, I'll go," Kairi interrupted, and hastily left the waiting room again. She knew what Naminé was thinking about now. The blonde knew as well as the redhead that it was all Kairi's fault.

Outside in the corridor, Kairi sighed lifelessly as she meandered, rarely in a straight line, through doors and up stairs and down lifts. By the end of her long and winding tour to nowhere-in-particular, it seemed only logical that she knew her way around the hospital blindfolded. She wasn't entirely sure how long she had been gone, but she knew that it was a fairly long time, and she ought to be getting back. Although what she could contribute to her family unit at this point she had no idea.

Kairi sighed deeply again, and followed the signs to the 'burns and other fire-related injuries' ward, though she already knew perfectly well where it was.

She got into a lift, only to find three other people already in there with her.

Two were female, one adult wearing a lot of smudged black eyeshadow with a stressed and dishevelled appearance, and one younger, presumably the woman's child, also clothed in a lot of black, with chains hanging from her hips even though she looked only a little older than Yuna.

The third figure was male, indefinitely, his hair stood up on end in chunky chocolate brown spikes, a bunch of droopy-looking flowers clasped in his hands.

"Kairi?" he enquired.

She looked closer. "Sora!" she exclaimed happily, encasing him in a hug. "I knew you'd come! Everything's really horrible, everyone's crying and Naminé yelled at me so I had to 'take a walk'. I was just on my way back up to the waiting room actually, d'you want to come? Oh, it's so great to see you!"

Sora smiled weakly. He wanted to return Kairi's embrace, but couldn't bring himself too. Despite his nonchalant attitude, he _was_ pleased to see her, having been apart for hours yet already missing her terribly. He had packed the shaky, worried redhead onto a taxi and sent her to the hospital, and then himself headed home, knowing that he couldn't contribute anything useful to her distraught family, but promising to come and see her later.

Said like that, he had made it sound like going on a pleasure cruise. Which it undoubtedly was not.

Sora hated hospitals. He always had done, ever since an early age when he was first brought into one to visit somebody. When at last the experience was over, he vowed never to set foot in a hospital again, yet he had broken his promise many, many times over the years, coming in every week to visit that same person again and again.

"Um… no, I can't…" he mumbled uneasily. "Sorry."

"Oh, well, at least you're here!" Kairi smiled. "Are these for me? Well, Yuna?"

She indicated towards the limp flowers in his sweaty grasp. He gazed at them, perplexed, as if surprised to see them there.

"No, Kairi. I'm sorry," he replied. She frowned slightly, wondering whom they could be for if not her or the injured toddler's bedside table.

The lift dinged, rudely interrupting her train of thought. The gothic mother began to leave, but the child was staying behind for some reason.

"Come along, Lulu!" the mother ushered, taking her daughter's hand and pulling her.

The child cried out, reaching for something near the back of the lift.

Sora nodded and smiled, then reached down and scooped up a moogle from the floor and gave it to the girl.

"Here you go," he smiled kindly, holding it out for her to take.

"Thank yooooou!" Lulu beamed happily, taking the fluffy creature from the boy before scurrying after her mother.

The lift doors closed again, sealing Sora and Kairi inside.

"So… if they're not for Yuna, who are they for?" the redhead queried once they were alone.

"Huh?" Sora murmured, turning to face her as if he had forgotten she was there.

"The flowers," Kairi pointed out, prodding at their droopy petals. "Who're they for?"

Sora looked at his feet. "Kairi… I'm not sure you'd understand."

Kairi was taken-aback, blinking rapidly with shock.

"What? But what about yesterday?" she exclaimed. "We talked… I thought we'd sorted everything out!"

The brunet nodded slowly. "Yeah, Kai, we sorted everything out about _you_," he pointed out. "But we never talked about _me_. We were just trying to get you to accept that your dad was gay and there's no conspiracies going on against you trying to kidnap your diary and hold it for ransom."

Kairi frowned a little. "Well… we've talked about me a lot in the past few days. That's true," she admitted. "So now it's your turn. What's bothering _you_?"

Sora sighed. "Like I said, Kai, I don't know if you'd understand," he breathed sadly.

Kairi gazed up at him. "I can try," she smiled, quoting his words from earlier that day. "I can always try. Please, Sora."

He chuckled slightly, obviously recognising his own words. "Alright. But don't overreact, okay?"

She nodded slowly and silently, sensing that this wasn't the right mood to start making more jokes in. The calm silence was all part of the deal.

The lift dinged again, stopping at the next floor and letting the two teenagers out into the open.

"This way," Sora informed her, interlocking her fingers with his own and switching the bunch of flowers to his other hand.

He led her down a long corridor, the luminous white colours of the ceiling and walls and the bloodcurdling squeak their trainers made as they skimmed along the floor. Eventually, they drew to a halt outside a door labelled 'Bay F'. It was closed, so they stood and stared at it for a while.

"Is Bay B a maternity ward?" Kairi asked, and then grinned at her own joke. Even Sora smiled a little.

"I don't think so. This is the mental health wing, after all," he pointed out.

Kairi nodded slowly, frowning slightly. "Who do you know who has mental health problems?" she asked softly.

Sora looked down at the floor again, clearly reluctant to answer. Kairi squeezed his hand encouragingly.

"Sora?" she prompted, smiling at him encouragingly.

"My dad," he finished finally, standing up straight and broad, trying to seem heroic and strong. "My dad was in a tram accident years ago. He was driving, but the tram went off the rails. He took a blow to the head and hasn't been able to remember anything after that day since."

He kept his jaw straight, not allowing it to quiver.

"Are you okay?" Kairi asked, squeezing his arm.

"I'm fine. I've never told anyone that before, that's all," Sora replied emotionlessly.

"You don't have to act macho," she assured him, looking up at him with genuine friend-like worry and concern.

"Yes, I do," he replied stiffly. "My mum went to pieces after it happened. I had to be strong. For _her_. And then the whole diary fiasco happened, and we fell out, and I was even more upset. But I didn't cry. I haven't ever cried."

Kairi gazed at him. She had always believed that Rikku and Sora's father had split up years ago and he had moved away, not making contact except for birthday cards to his son once a year.

"Oh, Sora," she breathed. "I guess I'm not the only one who's been keeping secrets."

Sora shrugged, desperate to feign false heroicness. "I've not kept him a secret, exactly," he pointed out. "Just… nobody asked."

"Just like nobody asked if my dad was gay," Kairi nodded in agreement, then paused for a moment. "And… and nobody asked… if Yuna was Naminé's daughter."

Sora looked up.

"You serious?" he asked. "Your sister… is really your niece?"

Kairi nodded sadly. "And… that's not the worst part," she added.

He frowned and shook his head. "That's not a bad part at all, it's a _good_ thing," he objected. "Naminé's a great mother. I always thought she looked after Yuna really well, the perfect female role model. But I figured that she was just taking over, taking the responsibility, because… because your mum's… away."

Kairi breathed out. "Yeah. Yeah, she is away, isn't she?" she murmured. "But, anyway, what I was saying, was that…"

She paused, and took a deep breath.

"Naminé having a baby wasn't supposed to be a secret. She was perfectly happy for everybody to know, once she'd told our parents. Mum disowned her, but Dad was supportive, just like she'd been supportive of him coming out," she explained. "That's why she dropped out of high school, but the teachers kept it a secret because they didn't want anyone to know that a pupil from their school fell pregnant before she was married, or even in a stable relationship. But it's not like she was underage or anything, so I don't see what the problem was."

Sora nodded slowly, taking it all in. "So, how did it become a secret?" he enquired.

Kairi sighed again, beginning to wonder if she would have any oxygen left in her lungs if she kept breathing out so heavily.

"That was my fault," she confessed. "_I_ chose to keep it a secret. It wasn't my decision, I know, but I did it all the same."

Sora frowned in confusion. "And… why did Naminé go along with it?" he asked.

Kairi shook her head. "Oh, she didn't! She's always told the truth, always accepted responsibility for Yuna. It was _me_ who chose to tell people that Yuna was my sister," she explained. "Just like I chose not to tell anyone about my dad's sexuality."

She looked at the floor, tears welling up in her violet eyes.

"These things weren't even my choice, so I shouldn't have a say in whether my dad comes out or my Naminé chooses to be a mother," she burbled, the frequency of her voice rising. "I don't know _why_, but I wanted to keep them a secret, lock them up in my diary, hoping it would make them go away."

Tears began to stream down her cheeks, so Sora reached out and wrapped a firm arm around her.

"And now it's come back to haunt me, hasn't it?" she sobbed. "Yuna could die, or at least lose the use of her arms. And it's _all my fault_!"

Sora held her as she buried her face into his jumper.

"It's all right, it's all right," he whispered kindly, embracing the redhead in a hug.

When her flowing tears finally subsided, she wiped her eyes and gazed up at her friend.

"Oh, Sora, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed. "I've done it again, haven't I?"

"Done what?" he queried, frowning.

"Well, you said we'd only talked about me this morning, and that's completely the truth. And now we were supposed to be talking about you, but we only ended up talking about me again…"

"Don't worry about it," Sora smiled kindly. "As long as you're all better, that's all that matters."

"I'm fine," she assured him. "But… what about you?"

Sora blinked. "Me?" he repeated. "Me? I'm… I'm fine."

"You don't have to lie, Sora," she pointed out. "You can tell me anything, you know that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," he smiled. "It's just that… that… well, I don't _like_ sharing my problems with people. I like to keep them close, where no one can get at them."

Kairi rolled her reddened eyes. "Just like I did, and look where that got me," she sighed. "My sis- my _niece_, I mean, is covered in burns, my father probably hates me for being so against his boyfri- I mean, _fiancé_, and his sexuality from the start. Plus my _sister_, my actual sister this time, hates me even more because she knows it's all my fault."

Sora frowned. "How is what happened to Yuna your fault?" he enquired. "You can't just blame yourself for stuff like this, stuff you wish hadn't happened."

"But it _is_ my fault!" she insisted. "If I hadn't run off like that, they wouldn't have sat down to talk about what to do next, and they would have kept a better eye on Yuna!"

He shook his head. "No, Kairi, that doesn't make it your fault!" he protested. "So you took the news about your dad and Beast badly. You just needed time to think it through and let it sink in, that's all. In all fairness, it's really _Yuna's_ fault that she burnt herself, although obviously nobody's going to blame a three-year-old, especially not a three-year-old lying injured in a hospital bed."

"That's true, I guess…" Kairi mumbled. "But…"

"But nothing," Sora interrupted. "Now, let's go see if there's any new on your _niece_ yet."

She frowned. "But Sora… weren't we going to… see your… dad?"

Sora glared at the floor. "We don't have to," he answered. "I see him every week, and he never remembers it afterwards, so what's the point?"

"I'd like to," Kairi replied firmly. "And besides, you've brought him flowers."

"They weren't really for him, they were for you!" Sora countered hastily. "Here you go…"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "_Sora_," she groaned. "Come on. Please, let me meet him."

Sora sighed reluctantly and reached out to push the door open.

"Oh, hello," a pink-haired nurse murmured, his tone bored. "My name is Marluxia. You are just in time to visit your loved ones. If I can help you with anything, please let me know."

His voice had been sleep-inducing-ly deadpan throughout the whole of the speech (which he had clearly memorised and been taught to say), and he obviously didn't give a damn about the patients or visiting time, so both Kairi and Sora telepathically agreed _not_ ask him for help, even if they needed any. Even if they were falling off a cliff, they would not ask him for help. Even if they were drowning in a lake, they would not ask him for help. In fact, the only time they would even consider asking him for help would be if they didn't know which shoes went best with their outfits. They gathered that he would know a lot about clothes as his bubblegum-pink hair was excruciatingly neat, so logically his fashion sense was just as tidy and perfect, if not more so.

"Sora? Sora, is that you?" a man on the other side of the room croaked.

Kairi spun around to see who the speaker was- a wary-looking man with dishevelled hair, sat up in his bed reading a book.

"Hi… Dad…" Sora murmured reluctantly, taking Kairi's hand and tugging her along to his father's bedside.

"Geez, you've grown a lot since I last saw you!" the man exclaimed. "When was that, again?"

"Last week," Sora replied dully. He'd clearly had this conversation before.

"Ah, yes, yes… of course, I remember…" Sora's father murmured slowly. "Um… what did we do? We were going on the tram, weren't we?"

"Dad, this is Kairi," Sora interrupted before his father could finish. "She's my… my best friend."

The two teenagers turned to smile at each other for a moment while Sora's father passed judgement on the redhead.

"Oh, hello, Kairi," he nodded, beaming. "Sora never did shut up about you, did you son? Always round each other's houses… yes, I remember… you two make a lovely couple."

They didn't want to burst the man's happy bubble by pointing out that they weren't an item, so they just smiled and nodded.

"Nice to meet you, sir," Kairi greeted politely.

He chuckled. "Call me Tidus," he replied cheerfully. "So tell me, what are two perfectly fit and healthy kids like you doing in hospital on a Saturday afternoon?"

Sora breathed out slowly. "I'm visiting you, Dad," he explained. "And Kairi's visiting her niece. I just thought I might introduce you."

"Ah yes, yes, yes, very nice to meet you, Kairi," Tidus nodded, bobbing his head up and down. "Who are you again?"

"Actually, Dad, we have to go now," Sora interrupted, snatching Kairi's wrist and pulling her away.

"Do you know, you look just like my son!" Tidus exclaimed cheerfully. "See you, bye!"

Once outside the room, Sora's chin began to quiver again.

"He doesn't remember things. He doesn't remember _anything_," he grimaced.

"Sora, it's okay, you don't have to pretend," Kairi soothed.

"Pretend what? Pretend that he's normal? Pretend that I don't know him? Pretend that I don't care? Pretend _what_, Kairi!?" he yelled angrily.

Kairi put her hand reassuringly on his shoulder.

"Pretend that everything's alright, when clearly it's not," she answered calmly.

Sora stared at her. "Alright? Alright? Of _course_ everything's not alright! I mean _look_ at him! He scarcely even knows who I am!" he cried.

Kairi shook her head. "No, I mean pretend that everything's alright with _you_," she replied. "It's clearly too much for you, just like keeping all those secrets about my family became too much for me. Don't go through it on your own all the time, only visit him when you feel ready, really ready. Not just because you feel you have to. And bring someone with you, like me or Rikku. We can help you."

A teardrop rolled down the brunet's cheek. "I have… to pretend… because if I don't… then it will all fall apart…" he whispered.

Kairi wrapped her arms around him.

"No it won't. We're here to support you," she soothed. "And… you should never pretend to be something you're not, because the consequences could be deadly. I learnt that yesterday at school."

Sora laughed a little in between sniffs. "Yeah, yeah, I guess so," he smiled weakly, more tears streaming down his cheeks in gushing rivulets. "Thank you, Kairi."

"What for?" she queried.

"For being here," he replied, wiping his eyes on his glove.

"Thank _you_ too," Kairi breathed, hugging him even tighter.

"What for?" he mimicked jokily.

She hit him playfully. "For being here," she mocked him, and they both started laughing childishly.

"Let's go and see Yuna," Sora declared finally. "So I can give her these flowers. I was always going to come and see you, Kai, but I had to… I had to see my dad first, you know?"

"It's okay," Kairi smiled. "Let's go. I can feel something good happening. I can _feel _it!"

They smiled at each other again, then clasped hands and ran down the long corridor.

"I'll race you up," Sora grinned as they came a stop next to the stairs and the lift. It was a difficult choice, but they had a way of making it fun.

"I'll take the lift, you take the stairs," Kairi agreed, smirking.

"Ready…"

"Set…"

"GO!!"

And together they set off, charging up the stairs manically, Kairi stabbing at the up button on the control panel until the lift doors finally opened for her. Once inside, she stabbed at the up button again, and held her breath until it got the top, feeling her insides churn around as it rose up, up, up.

Sora's legs were aching as he leapt and bounded up the stairs, sometimes tripping on a step, sometimes stubbing his toe, sometimes catching his elbow on the edge of a banister, but none of that mattered, because he was with Kairi, and he was having fun.

He got to the top of the stairs puffing and panting at the very same moment that she emerged from the lift, grinning massively. She spotted him straight away, and they exchanged mischievous glances.

"I'm going to beat you!" they exclaimed in unison, and then both charged forwards, running until they could run no more, tripping and falling and landing sprawled in a giggly heap on the floor.

Suddenly, a door opened beside them, and Naminé came out, beaming breathlessly.

"Kairi! There you are!" she cried, helping her sister up, then waving politely at Sora. "Yuna's going to be alright!"

Kairi let out a long squeal, joined hands with Naminé and started bouncing around in a merry little circle.

"I knew it! I knew everything would be okay!" she exclaimed happily.

Beast and Hercules heard the commotion and came through the door too.

"It always is," Beast pointed out, just as he had done earlier. But this time, he didn't turn and smile at Hercules. He turned and smiled at all of them, Hercules, Naminé, Kairi and Sora (even though he hadn't a clue who he was), in turn, and he did it all without even itching his ear.

"Sora!" Hercules declared cheerfully. "What're you doing here?"

Sora turned to Kairi, who nodded and smiled encouragingly.

"I'm visiting my dad," he replied confidently. "He's in the mental health ward, memory loss and whatnot."

"I had an aunt who lost all her memory," Beast announced thoughtfully. "She had a lot of cats."

Kairi grinned. "Beast, I'm really, really sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to be so rude, I just need time to let it sink in, is all," she apologised.

"Don't worry about it," Beast smiled.

"I'm sorry too, for not telling you sooner," Hercules admitted. "I should have told you about Beast and I years ago."

"It's okay. I understand now," Kairi told them. "You know me too well. You knew exactly how I'd react, and it wouldn't be in a good way. So, maybe not telling me was for the best."

"And we're totally behind you one hundred percent now!" Naminé beamed happily, embracing both her father and Beast in a hug that stretched her arms further than they could go.

"Yeah, one hundred percent!" Kairi echoed, copying her sister's movements but opting to hug her father and Beast separately. And then everyone all together in one giant hug, which even Sora, who felt a little out of place amidst this tender family moment, reciprocated with much enthusiasm, and was happily accepted by the other members of the group.

They were never the 'ideal' family, but they did their best. It wasn't perfect, but it would do.

* * *

**A/N: **yayy! it's finally finished/partay/ this is like the first thing i've ever finished in my whole life, 'cause i'm such a lazy sod i can't be bothered to do anything. and umokay i'm really sorry that it's a day late and crap but now i'm going away for a week so i'll be back next saturday, hopefully the results will be up by then okay bye i hafta go now byeeeee hope you liked the story thank you to everyone who reviewed byeee!

xx**THE END**xx


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